Immigrant, author, founder, and educator of Murthy Law Firm, Sheela Murthy is the special guest for this episode. She speaks to her experiences as an immigrant and immigration issues that lawyers may be able to traverse in both the United States and India. She speaks to how she moved from being in full control of her firm to growing it and being more of a strategist. Sheela also explains being able to surround yourself with people that have intrinsic interests and expertise in their specializations. She also speaks to outsourcing her work to various places. Sheela explains her opinions on risk-taking versus being content with joining a large firm and considering the upside of documenting your processes and evolving your business through the use of knowledgeable people and systems.
Welcome to the podcast edition of Maximum Growth Live. The number one program for lawyers who want to grow their practices. Each week, our hosts Seth Price and Jay Ruane tackle the fundamental questions about how to grow the profit and profitability of your law firm. To watch the program live, submit your questions, and hear the latest episode, tune in every Thursday at 3PM Eastern on Facebook for our live show. Maximum Growth Live is a production of Maximum Lawyer Media.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m doing my shooter, McGavin. My name is Jay Ruane, I’m the CEO of FirmFlex, your social media marketing agency for lawyers, as well as the managing partner of Ruane attorneys, your civil rights and criminal defense law firm in Connecticut. And with me, once again, my friend, down there, no longer in Del Boca Vista, but joining me from near our nation’s capital, Seth J Price. Seth is the founder of BluShark Digital, your SEO firm for lawyers, as well as the managing partner of Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina law firm. I’m waiting to hear when you’re going to go into North Carolina so I can make it, that whole trek down the southeast coast, because I don’t want you coming up near me, Seth. Seth, how’s your week going this week?
Going well. I’m really excited about our guest today. You know, this is somebody who I’ve been following for quite a while. There was a landmark article a number of years ago in the New York Times sort of talking about this incredible firm, just, you know, less than an hour from where I was, and reached out to Sheela, and sort of was, my mind was blown. Things that we talk about today, she was doing 20 years ago. Putting systems in place, offshore labor, creating something where she was no longer, while she was the brand, she was no longer make, doing the sausage making or even the managing. She truly E Myth-ed probably as well as any lawyer we know that I just can’t wait to sort of get her insights on her journey.
Yeah, you know, I definitely do. I made sure to take it easy yesterday for St. Patrick’s Day to make sure that I was focused and able to be present during this conversation today because I didn’t want to be dragging have having had too many shots of Irish Mist and a couple of pints of Guinness on Patty’s Day. But you know, one of the things that’s really interesting about her story, having read parts of her book, was that a lot of this stuff, even though she went to Harvard, they don’t teach you this in Harvard. This is stuff that…
Everybody had a Harvard go. My uncle was Harvard way back in the day, right? And my dad was, their classmates, like, there’s like one PI lawyer in their class and he buys the wine for all their dinners. Like it is a group that doesn’t go into entrepreneurship generally. They may start companies, but they’re certainly not, you know, elevating the B2C Law Firm landscape.
You know, it’s interesting, lawyers tend to be very risk averse. Now, our audience tends to be the opposite of that, right? Our audience tends to be people that are willing to take chances. But there’s this part of us, as lawyers, that gets beaten into us and 1L, 2L year about, you don’t take chances, you look at all the options, and then somebody else gets to make that decision. And I think it’s interesting that of all the law entrepreneurs that I know, that are in our audience that I’ve met at seminars, that type of thing, I feel like the people that I have met, would have been successful small business owners no matter what business they got into. They just happened to pick law, because they maybe were steered that way or had some interest that way. But then when they got to law school, they said, “You know what? The big firm life may not be for me.”
On that roadmap, right? I came out, there were no great jobs, go go 80s were done, and I grabbed the big firm job so I could check the box. I had no interest. If I could have written the script all over again, I would never have gone inside of a law firm. My job, my, my sort of vision for life was something entrepreneurial. It just happened to be a law firm because of my law partner that we ended up launching.
Yeah, it’s a really interesting thing. And you know, a lot of people and it’s, I have an attorney who’s with me in my office now. She is a first-generation lawyer, first-generation college grad, child of immigrants. And she has this incredible mind and entrepreneurial spirit and yet she has this, this battle inside her because we are, we’re dealing with, she’s a woman of color, she’s, her family are immigrants, and they have a vision for what a lawyer is. And it doesn’t comport with her vision for entrepreneurial leadership. I think that’s why she found her way to us after going through a number of big firm and corporate and municipal jobs. And, but there’s a part of her that says, well, I need to fulfill the role that my forebears wanted me to fulfill, to honor their sacrifice. And I keep saying to her, you know, I want to pull you into my world of entrepreneurship because you have so much to offer. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation because I think that’s something that Sheela found early on was, I want to go after what I want to go after. And it’s a, it’s a remarkable message for all of our listeners. So what do you think, should we bring her on?
Let’s do it.
All right. We’ll be right bo-, right back, folks. Let’s hear some messages, and when we come back, we’ll have Sheela Murthy with our Maximum Growth Live interview. We’ll be right back.
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Welcome, Sheela Murthy. We’re so excited to have you here today.
I’m honored to join you guys.
Sheela, the lawyer, the entrepreneur, the philanthropist, and the recent subject of the book, Being Sheela: The Life Journey of an Immigration Lawyer. Very exciting and a very fascinating read.
Thank you so much. I was very, equally surprised that somebody would actually want to write about us lawyers.
You know, you’re not just any lawyer. And one of the things that I’ve been following for a long time, and why I love to have you on the show, is you have done something with your, with your law firm. And I remember early on, when I spoke to you, you said, “I don’t have a law firm, I have a technology play.” And the, the, you know, can you share with the audience a little bit about what you built. You were born in India, emigrated to the US, Harvard Law. And you know, a lot of people have started law firms, not many people have the Murthy Firm.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, again. So really, I mean, our goal. So sometimes I defined or explained that it’s not really a true law firm in that sense, like you said, it’s sort of a quasi-social entrepreneurship business, a law firm, a technology company. Because one of the main driving forces for me was to educate, enlighten and empower the world on the complex and ever-changing US laws and regulations. And I remember 25, 26, 27 years ago, when we were one of the earliest law firms out there on the internet, and still the world’s most popular legal website, a lot of people were like, “Why are you giving away the store for free? Shouldn’t you be charging for this advisory information?” And my attitude was, look, the internet’s going to change the world, it’s going to change everything, so we might as well continue to empower, and be the good go to place that people will trust and respect. And, you know, with hard work and determination and a little bit of vision and listening to other smart people around me, I wish I could say that was all my own brilliant genius, knowing how the internet will change the world, but alas, it wasn’t. But it was my openness and willingness to know that I need to get feedback from others who may be way smarter than me. So I think lesson 101 is: surround yourself with very smart people who compliment you and who are very different than you and you who will challenge the way we look at the world and think about things.
So we get it, right? Giving away content, awesome, becoming the authority. It’s a playbook that now seems, of course, but you are like one of the first people with the internet to tap into that. Talk, walk us through how you built the firm to leverage that, and you know, how you leverage technology, because again, two of the things we talk a lot about on this show are leveraging technology, as technology and systems, as well as using a global workforce, and it seems like you were, again, decades ahead of your time.
Thank you. So in terms of, you know, using what they now call informational marketing. Again, it was, I think, so at the end of the day, you can be very smart and savvy with business, but you also have to have what I call passion and purpose in life. And so since my passion and purpose was to educate the world, because I suffered going through the immigration process, which you alluded to earlier, being born in India, going through the immigration process with a lawyer in New York whose focus was to make a little more money, rather than focusing on helping me and educating me and getting me on my road to success. I just wanted to create a law firm where the focus would be on helping clients, educating and empowering them. And in the process, it’s like build it and they will come. It was a little bit of, you know, coming from a good place, what did they say, intentionality will determine where we go. And so to a large extent, it was okay, we’re going to educate people and we certainly didn’t want to become bankrupt in the process of doing it, we wanted to continue the business. And I don’t think we quite realize how big of an impact having name and credibility and honesty and integrity and being the go-to place would become for the firm in terms of having, of course, a Baltimore, Maryland-based presence, a small Seattle office, and then having a team in India with about 35 to 40 people in Chennai, India, and has offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad, in India. And the vision really was, again, if people are stuck at a US consulate somewhere in Asia, for us to wake up at two o’clock at night to answer a consular officer, it didn’t make sense. So how could we do this in a manner that would be beneficial for somebody local, local attorneys there to help the clients? As well as how can we serve, you know, you need two hands to clap. How can they do us, help our clients who are stuck there? How can we take care of the immigration within the United States and create this global synergy so that people can work together in a beautiful, brilliant, seamless fashion to get 24/7 client service?
So how did you, so talk us through this. You know, you have a Baltimore operation, some people in Seattle, but how did you sort of lay out what’s done in the US, what was being done overseas?
So all of the work that requires a US lawyer, an admitted lawyer in the United States to practice as a lawyer and a law firm, in terms of representing clients filing the petitions, filing the motions, the appeals, we get a lot of cases with denials from other law firms or Request for Evidence RFPs. And so we sort of become the lawyers’ lawyers to some extent. And so we take on filing those kinds of petitions and applications and processes in the United States. For people who are stuck in India with Visa denials, you don’t need a US lawyer for that process. Because, again, you’re in a foreign country and those lawyers who are there are lawyers duly admitted and licensed to practice under India in Indian government laws, but they are practicing US immigration law. So it’s not really a law firm, it’s more like backend operations. But because of the complex nuances of, you know, cross continental laws, and the Indian government, not allowing me, as a US citizen, to own and operate an operation in India, I had to actually divest myself of the entire ownership of that company years ago, 10, 15 years ago, because going into it, nobody told me about these limitations. And then you’re like, “Oh, my God, I can’t own this.” So you know what, let it run on its own steam, let it do what it will but it’s more back operational support for people stuck there who have legal issues and questions. And now we’re even using them as we’re overwhelmed with work here to have them do some of the data entry, scan some of the documents, look at the paperwork for us and input some of that data so that when our staff comes in first thing in the morning, some of that information is already in our database and systems.
So before I flip to Jay, you know, one of the things that you’ve done and sounds like you’ve done it for a while, is you’ve extracted yourself out of this to almost a Chairwoman rather than a managing partner. Talk just a little bit about that process and how you’ve gone through that over the years.
So that is harder, I think, for most of us as lawyers to give up the control, because we’re all A-Type control freaks, we want to control it till our dying day, even if you’re 120 by bed right? Now, for those who are familiar with my life, or who are aware of it, I will share a secret for those who are not aware. For those who are aware, you know it. I’m married to this right-wing creative artist, a professor at the Maryland, who is at the Maryland Institute College of Art, a Master’s in Fine Arts. Long hair, beard, he was a lead drummer in a rock group in college. So completely different way of looking at the world. So right from the last 15, 20 years, he would say, “I don’t understand why you’re working 16, 18 hours a day, I don’t get why you do this. When are you going to be focusing on the bigger picture of enjoying life, of being a true teacher, a mentor, a guide. Who’s going to be looking at the big picture vision for the firm if you are working from morning to evening, like that little you know, more on the ferris wheel that keeps going round and round. Like, when are you going to become a strategic visionary, a true leader?” And hearing it for a long time, I slowly but surely started to release my tight grip on wanting to control everybody and everything. And, like the beauty of life, things we don’t control, the minute I stopped micromanaging, the firm actually started to grow faster because now I was able to actually get a bird’s eye view instead of having my blinders on and just working for days. So it’s, some of it came from external stimulus, some of it was me realizing that I really wouldn’t be happy working, you know, 12, 14, 16 hour days, 6, 7 days a week. And I couldn’t see myself doing that when I, you know, 60, 70, 80, 90, just didn’t make sense. So for almost 15 years now, which means in my 40s, I pretty much started to, you know, we, I have a lawyer who’s now been with me 21 years, who’s the firm’s managing partner, managing attorney, Aron Finkelstein, and I have three assistant managing attorneys who have been in the firm about 15 years each. And part of it of course, I think, again, another problem, I say a problem, because it’s a challenge for us as lawyers, is retaining talent, keeping people, keeping them engaged and motivated and feeling valued and appreciated. And it’s almost a secret recipe that isn’t in our DNA. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, there’s a website and a place a place called thelawyerbrain.com, that apparently we are an anomaly. We are the freaks of nature, we are the Velcro, the world’s so different in almost every other profession or occupation in the world. And when I started to realize, hearing all of these, you know, like many people, I did the Myers Briggs Personality Test, I heard about this lawyerbrain.com, I contributed to the book about the lawyers as well being published by the ABA. I knew that lawyers, brilliant as we are smart, clever, strategic, will counsel the world, we love solving problems. But we shouldn’t become experts in areas we are not intrinsically good at, our DNA doesn’t work for certain things. So we need to be able to graciously yield and surround ourselves with people who are very different than us, where the one plus one can become three. It’s not easy. It’s not easy, because and I come back to us all being freaks. So in my case, I knew that this man, my husband, wouldn’t make me bankrupt. So if you don’t have a spouse in your life or somebody you trust, maybe it’s a partner in the business, maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s an outside consultant firm. I know a lot of people join the organizations where CEOs gather together from different brands, companies and different businesses. It’s very good for networking, another point of view for lawyers to not just put on our blinders and be only with other law firms and lawyers, but go out into the outside world because great cross-referrals, business and understanding business and the law firm more as a business rather than purely as the practice of law because we kind of straddle a profession and a, slash occupation, and a business.
You know, I’ve got a question for you about early on in this process. There must have been pushback from other lawyers, and maybe even people early on who came to you and haven’t stayed with you, where they said, “Well, you just can’t do it this way. That’s not how lawyers work.” So I want to talk a little bit about how you were able to overcome that and say, no, no, no, I’m going to do it this way, either come along, or get out of the way. Can we talk a little bit about sort of the intrinsic cement shoes that most lawyers have found themselves wearing that won’t let them innovate and iterate like you have?
So it’s a fantastic analysis and question. I think the trump card that I held, and that still is with me, is that I continue to be the 100% equity owner of the firm. So, to the extent that someone says, “You’re full of it, Sheela, I don’t agree with everything that’s going on.” I’m like, okay, now remember, I could do that. Or I could say, “Look, I value what you’re saying it, let’s break this down. Let’s see, what am I missing that you’re looking at?” And so being completely open. I think someone once said, you know, I am, I tend to be a little bit Pollyanna, a little bit in, sort of lala land. I don’t know what my limitations are or should be, because people have said, you know, you have three strikes against you. Do you really realize you’re a woman, you’re an immigrant, you’re a person of color? And I said, “Oh, my God, I had no clue. I thought those would be my three biggest strengths and attributes that would make me successful.” So I’ve always tried to look at the glass of life, instead of half empty as half full. I’ve always said when people have said this, it can’t be done this way, or it doesn’t make sense, or why would you give the store away for free to say, “Wait, if other smart people around me think this will work, how much do I lose financially and otherwise by giving it a shot for three months, six months, a year,” because initially, I was the only law, lawyer in my law firm for the first almost three or four years, because I was so nervous about hiring more people. Because I was convinced that this bubble would burst, I would have no money to feed myself and others, so why bother? So I was almost experimenting. It’s like some of the weird people that experiment on medication themselves, I was experimenting, to see whether this, what I was doing would actually be an incredible, like a genius of an idea, or the dumbest idea that ever happened. And one of the things you will read over and over and over again from the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, whether it’s the founder of FedEx, or founder of, you know, the Kentucky Fried Chicken. I mean, you have in business school, the MBAs will tell you thousands of cases where everybody said to them, you’re a moron. If you remember the founder of FedEx, in Harvard Business School, the professor said, “Whatever you do, do not do what you’re doing. It’s the dumbest idea on the face of this earth, to have somebody from Baltimore, send a package to Baltimore, for it to fly in the middle of the country, and then come back out is like sheer nonsense. It’s going to be a disaster.” But guess what, it worked. And the reason it worked, is because there was a deep level of conviction and maybe not knowing your limitations and knowing that this possibly couldn’t work. Because a lot of life is on blind faith. A lot of life is trusting each other. I mean, you know, you want to schedule a time to talk with me, how do I know it’s not like coming from a really not a great place? We trust the world runs on trust and faith and love and compassion and good things and positive things. And so when I tell you, I run Pollyanna, it’s like, okay, I truly believe that if you give the all, give out good in the world, the goodness will come back. And so giving out that information, that marketing 27 years ago, when it was unheard of answering questions, for tens of thousands of people, we had over 10,000 people in a news network digest. And people were like, “Why are you answering this? I don’t get it.” And my attitude was, I’m learning immigration law. I’m learning to use the computer, before that I used to use the dictaphone, dictate and had a secretary type for me. And you know what, I just looked at it as it’s gonna help me and if I lose everything, you know what? I know I gave it a serious shot at life, because there will never be an upside if you don’t have a downside. So you have to be willing to take a risk as a business owner, as an entrepreneur. Because if you say I don’t want to risk, then you join a big firm, and by the way, 98 out of 10 Harvard lawyers, I would say more than 98 out of 100 Harvard lawyers, don’t start law firms, don’t become entrepreneurs, don’t do this. Because they, they make a very good living, they do very well financially. But again, there’s you make a good living, but then there’s a completely different level when you are in your own business and an entrepreneur because, you know, you’re in a different legal of your own, I think.
Oh, surely, surely. I mean, I love that, I love the incessant optimism. Because I think as a legal entrepreneur, you need to have that. I haven’t ever met any successful legal entrepreneur who doesn’t have a natural level of optimism. They wake up every morning very happy. But I want to switch to my favorite topic, which is systems, because you built a systems juggernaut. And I want to talk to you, you know. In the last five years or so, systems have really become a buzzword, a lot of lawyers, there’s a lot of products out there for lawyers and business owners to use to document their systems. But you were doing it 15, 20 years ago. So let’s talk about that. How did you document your systems, get buy-in from your people, and really develop a systems-based practice?
It, so the technology was evolving, the world was changing, the Internet was expanding, computers were getting less expensive. And again, as I keep saying over and over again, may sound like a broken recorder, surround yourself with with people who challenge you, question you, tell you what you’re doing is completely wrong, or at least that you need to look at different ways to do things. And you know, and they’re, if they’re willing to put their shoulder to the wheel and be part of that dream and vision to work with you. So as we were working on systems, so, you know, we slowly evolved, our systems kept growing, it was a very organic growth. It wasn’t like, you know, oops, now here, let’s go plunk down 3 or 4 million dollars and buy a new software off the shelf. We did attend the ABA Tech Show, I remember, about 25 years ago, and looked at every software that existed out there for immigration law firms and law firms in general. And we didn’t find anything that gave us some sort of peace of mind that this would work for our firm. So we said, okay, let’s create our own software. And so we started from scratch to completely create a proprietary software, in which, again, we’ve invested a whole bunch of money by having a team both here and in India working on it. So again, we used global workforce to stretch, strategize, and again, to be able to work 24/7 and save costs. And so we’ve really evolved slowly but organically making it work. As we came across a problem, we would say, okay, how can, where does this go? How does this go across to other teams or departments within the firm? That is, by plugging this hole, we’ll do it. Should we look at the bigger picture? Again, the bird’s eye view on how can we work on this software. And I can tell you that after 27 years, we continue to tweak it on a daily basis. Because the laws change, the forms change, the systems change. And constantly, we’re trying to fine tune the system to make it more lean, mean, fighting machines, so we can be more efficient, and more profitable, and provide peace of mind and some, you know, not have your staff completely overwhelmed and overworked. So, you know, I would like to say again, I’m this incredible know-it-all visionary that came up with this master plan, but to a large extent it evolved as the firm grew and evolved. But we were nimble, we were willing to go with the flow, and we were open to the idea that this could potentially be something that we need to keep tweaking as we grow.
It’s funny, you know, Jay is smiling because Jay has done just that, when he doesn’t see software he likes he builds it himself. And I didn’t see the mark, I didn’t see the SEO company I liked out there and built, built BluShark out of that, you know. The other obstacle, which is I mean, again, I’ll just put for, you know, you know Baltimore, not the easiest place to scale a business. So that that may be your fourth obstacle that you were, you were dealing with. But I want to pivot for a moment into intake. You know, that’s something that most of the lawyers on our show have some you know, uh, you know, have struggled with, but it’s one of those areas that you’re constantly tweaking and trying to figure, figure out how to do better and how to make sure that you have motivated staff that brings people in. I know your brand helped a lot because a lot of people came and they weren’t shopping, they said, “Hey, we know we’re coming to the Murthy Firm.” But what, you know, what did you do to help scale intake across the globe? How did you, how did you, you know, to build the firm you did, you have to have the clients come come somehow. What were some of the, sort of, as best practices you developed over the years to help bring people from potential client to paying client?
So initially, Seth, it was obviously an issue in terms of most people wanted, they were so used to getting everything for free, you know, 27 years ago, and nobody paid for somebody that they just found on the internet. And there was also the issue of, like you said, name, reputation, credibility, integrity, you know, how do we know these are not legit? How do we know these are not scam artists that are going to take our money and run away with it, so you build trust one person at a time, online at the time. But the beauty, of course, of the internet was just as quickly as the bad name can go around, the good name can go around too. And I sort of didn’t understand completely the power of multiplication 27 years ago, but as more and more people started getting cases approved, we started seeing the referrals from them and their family and their friends and their friends’ friends and posting on the internet that, “Hey, this is a law firm and a lawyer you should use because, you know, she’s a Harvard lawyer, and they she cares, and she will fight for you.” And I am by nature a fighters, I think many lawyers have a fighting, you know, in our DNA. And I love the fact that I don’t like hearing “No.” I love winning for my clients. I don’t, I don’t like it when I feel the government’s trying to pull a fast one and, you know, issue a denial on a case that is either clearly in our favor. Or certainly there’s another gray area that I think we can, you know, arguing a point and try to win and fight for the clients. So you get the name and reputation of someone who’s proactive, who’s caring who’s dedicated, who’s going to be a pit bull and not let go when the government, if the government issued a denial, and we would go back and say, “Well, okay, is it cheaper to file an appeal or cheaper to just file a new case for you?” So that will get you the Green Card one way or the other. So we did what it took to get to the result of helping the client, and we did it, and I did it, purely out of the goodness of my heart, because I don’t like seeing no and getting denials. I think we have, like most lawyers, we like winning, we like winning for our clients. And we like problem-solving. And so I used the DNA that works in my favor to build the firm and in areas that I knew I had an Achilles heel, and I was very weak in those areas, I surrounded myself with people very different, who would complement me and asked me to look at different aspects or angles of the issue. And the intake system kept, again, growing and evolving so we started off very big, you know, overall, and then tuned it and fine tuned it and worked on it. And it’s still a work in process, it’s still a work in progress, we’re still continuing to process, a system that’s never going to be, what do they say? I think once Tom Friedman said at one of our talks where I was the chair on the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. He said, “If you say you’re finished, then you are finished.” We can never ever be done in life, you’re always improving, you’re always fine tuning your process, and you need to continue. And the other thing he or, he said, which I completely agree with, is that PQ, persistent quotient, and CQ, curiosity quotient, will always be more important than IQ. And so, you know, as an immigrant, I think immigrants bring so much, immigrants can teach Americans so much just as much as Americans can teach immigrants so much, because you are so open to the world, you’re coming to a new country, a new culture, even understanding that thick American accent is a challenge on the first time. But just knowing that, you know what, it’s such a great country. It’s got incredible, you know, opportunities. It’s the land of milk and honey for most of us from outside. Yet a lot of people here see the problems, and the race riots, and the tensions. But we from outside, sometimes come in with almost again, this childlike innocence/ignorance and think that oh, I can do anything. I’m in this incredible country called the United States of America. So when someone says here’s a hurdle, Sheela, I’m like, what hurdle? That’s like fun. That’s a challenge. Let’s go cross it and then go to the bitten. Let’s cross the next hill and the next hill and the next mountain and the next mountain.
Sheela, I have a question for you. You successfully scaled to a size that many lawyers aspire to and most lawyers can’t achieve. Looking back now, do you have a specific hire or category of person or type of job that you hired where you can say, “Man, if I only hired that person or filled that role two or three years earlier, my life would have been so much easier.” Where can people who are looking to scale say, if I’m going to hire, I should hire this person sooner rather than later. What’s your input on some, a question like that.
Good question, Jay. So in general, I don’t tend to look back and say, “Oh, I wish I wish,” I try not to because again, it’s the eternal optimist. And the person that says, you know, what, if I made all those terrible mistakes, those mistakes are what have helped me to become stronger and better today. If I hadn’t made those mistakes, I might never have appreciated the importance of retaining people. And talking about the importance of retaining people, especially in law firms, my first, and I’ve shared this in my book, in the book that you referred to, the biography on my life by HarperCollins, where I ended up losing three of my four paralegals within a one week period. That was 75% of my law firm walked out on me, the first couple years of my running it. In the beginning, I always would say, “Oh, they’re lazy, they’re incompetent, they’re not as driven as motivated, they don’t buy into my dream.” I was basically pointing the finger at them rather than pointing it at myself. The minute I realized that the underlying problem with all those three people wanting to quit, was I, if, me, I, me and myself, that was the only one person I could blame on the face of this earth, it was very painful, it was very difficult, because I had to accept that I was somehow chasing away people, because I did not appreciate what they brought to the table, their limitations, their strengths. And if they didn’t bind to the vision and mission of the firm and my glorious goal of educating and empowering the world and taking away all these problems, then it’s ultimately my fault, that I do not sit there and invest the time to share the firm’s vision, mission, values and goal, which now, by the way, we have regular meetings with staff, with new staff, with, with existing attorneys, with paralegals, and I go through rooms. I invest time on human capital because what do they say? The most valuable assets in a law firm walk out every evening when you go home pre-Covid days, they went back, they could now now, in a COVID world, most of them can work anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world, for whoever treats them right, respects them and pays them maybe more money. But people don’t leave only for money, people leave because they, we use the word EGO, ego. If you hurt somebody’s ego, we don’t treat people right, intentionally or unintentionally doesn’t matter, we will lose our best people. And some of the most creative people tend to have super-sensitive egos. So if we want to have, so when you say, you know, should I, did I get somebody, did I not? I will tell you, I did notice initially, and maybe goes back to the world 27 years ago, Jay and Seth, that very few men were willing to work under a woman 27 years ago, because I was young. Remember, you know, now I’m in my late 50s. So I was in my 30s, late 30s or, or early 30s, I guess or whatever, right? 27, mid 30s. So here’s a young woman of color, an immigrant trying to hire all these, you know, men with experience and people were like, I didn’t quite understand it. So if you would say, what was the one great hire, I’ve said this to Aron, you know, he was what I would refer to as a baby attorney. He had been practicing immigration law for five years, but was studying as a student, running, studying, working and, you know, had a family. And so it was a very good find. And he looked, he’s very, he’s business savvy, but yet, I taught him everything I knew, like a good teacher and a mentor. And, you know, for whatever reason, he decided to, what do they say, hitch your wagon onto my cart or hit your cart onto my wagon? You know, he decided to make this a part of his life’s dream. And once I had that one male, I found other men more willing to join the law firm, because I remember when Aron joined, we were 24 women, and he was the first male we hired.
Wow.
And men, law firm, lawyers didn’t like, now I think it’s more common to say if a woman’s running a firm that men are okay to work under a woman. Even now, I think it might not be as common. But certainly 25 years ago, it wasn’t, a quarter century ago it wasn’t the norm. And so I said to Aron, that you know, you are one of the best things that happened. He said, hey, it’s the same. It’s like a marriage made in heaven. It’s you know, if it’s, you can make one plus one three, that’s the best. So he often shares the story about you know, with Sheela, you get what you see, see what you get, there’s no hidden agenda. And so you, he’s more paranoid by nature, very more cautious than I am. And so he kept waiting for the first six months for the other shoe to drop, the proverbial other shoe to drop. And then after six months finally said, I guess this is who she is, and I’m not going to worry about is something terrible going to happen, that you’re getting what you see. And so again, as I talk about people completely different from ourselves, who complement us, that’s what I would focus on because they make you uncomfortable to some extent, because we look at the world so differently. But I know that that one plus one can become three because I surround myself with people who are so different.
That’s awesome. Well, Sheela, thank you so much for your time today. The book, which we’ll put up is Being Sheela: The Life Journey of an Immigration Lawyer. What an amazing journey it has been and we thank you so much for your time today.
It’s been an honor and a pleasure and I really hope we influence and impact a lot of young people to thinking outside the box, to being open and creative, and not second-guessing themselves. It’s a combination of your gut, and your mentors and people you surround yourself with. And it’s not just the practice of law, because the practice of law is integrally connected with us as human beings, it’s enjoying the journey of life as a human being. And I get back to the spirituality of it, because we’re not just human beings going through the spiritual experience, but we’re spiritual beings going through the human experience. And as lawyers, we truly can solve problems and empower people, help others, and in the process, learn, grow and become better as lawyers and as human beings. So good luck to everybody.
Thank you so much, Sheela. That’s just a great positive message to end our segment here. And folks, we’ll be right back with more Maximum Growth Live.
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 bigger impact, you have to have a digital blueprint. Throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta Divorce Law Group, over 1400%. Seth and his team have years of experience in this area.
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Wow, Seth. Just, I mean, some really, really interesting stuff there about her journey. And I love the positivity. She’s just got, you know, to having a conversation with her, you can feel the warmth and the positivity ooze out. What were your takeaways?
No. And it was fascinating for many of us who are not even as far in as, she’s further along than most of our audience. The fact that she’s figured out all these different things. She figured out how to leverage global labor. She figured out systems and software before you could just go buy something. The idea that she elevated a brand where she went from lawyer to manager and then clearly has elevated herself even beyond that to somebody who can, you know, play chess and move you know. If there’s anybody that we’ve had on the show who is truly e myth-ed it, I feel like, that’s our guest today. That was that was just awesome.
Yeah, it was just really good stuff. Really good stuff. So what we’re going to do now is we’re going to end this week’s live show, folks. A couple of cool things for you. Number one, you can always catch us on our own standalone podcast, which is available wherever you get your free podcasts, either an Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, we are there. It’s called Maximum Growth Live. Please subscribe, check us out, give us five stars. We’d love to see your feedback there. Of course, every Tuesday and Thursday, you can catch us here live on Facebook with our Facebook live show and you can actually go on our Facebook page facebook.com/maximumgrowthlive. And you can watch any of our prior episodes, so if you hear us talking about one that interests you, you can watch it on demand at any time. Of course, our show is syndicated through Maximum Lawyer and the Maximum Lawyer Media family. If you’re listening on Maximum Lawyer, on their podcast right now, I would suggest that you also tune in to our podcast on Tuesdays because it’s the only place that you can catch our Tuesday show is on our standalone podcast, or, of course, on the Facebook Live page as well. But what I’m gonna do on the back end of this set, is we had a really, really interesting conversation issue this past week. And so I’m going to bolt onto the podcast edition of this episode, our Tuesday conversation, because it gives some people some insight into what goes on every Tuesday on our live show, when you and I actually break down and talk about scalability growth, problems that we are having. It’s a lot more personal of an episode and I think our audience would certainly be interested in doing it. Of course, you can always tune into Seth’s show, the SEO Insider, if you want to get deeper into digital marketing. Seth has a weekly show that he puts out where he interviews the greats in search engine optimization and digital marketing, and that’s available to you. And finally, of course, if you’re interested in systems and growth, please join our Maximizing Your Law Firm for Growth– Systems, Systemising Your Law Firm for Growth Facebook group, that’s available. And boy, that’s a lot of stuff I just threw at them stuff. But we’ll have links in our podcast show notes, as well as down below in our live stuff. Got anything else for me, Seth? Exciting days, not far away. Opening day for baseball is not far away.
Yeah, it was great. You know, being in Florida getting to see a game of spring training, sort of you you could could taste it. I was watching the Caps/Islanders last night, and you know, seeing that, that closed stadium. I just can’t wait back for live hockey. So yes, baseball is coming. And, you know, I think that we’re starting to see the world open up so, slowly but surely, hopefully by, by summer we have some form of normalcy
Yeah, I think we’re gonna get there. I mean, the vaccines are rolling out. Connecticut’s gonna allow a lot more people to get vaccinated soon. And I think by Fourth of July, it, we’re going to be, you know, back to normal, whatever the new normal is.
The rest of the South is gonna laugh at us and just say, “Hey, we’ve been there for a while.” But for us stuck in the Northeast, we’re almost there.
It’s the world we live in, folks. And we are Maximum Growth Live. Want to thank you all for being with us. Seth, thank you for being with me this week. We will see you again on Tuesday, folks, we’ll see you. Have a great weekend. Enjoy your life. Get out, get some sun, and bye for now.
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live, our Tuesday show. My name is Jay Ruane, I’m the CEO of FirmFlex, a Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Ruane Attorneys. Here in Connecticut, we do criminal rights, criminal defense and civil rights, you know, no matter what I say, Seth, my words are getting all jumbled up. But with me as always, my man, down in the capital area, my man, Seth Price, right over there. CEO of BluShark Digital, your SEO for law firms, all types of digital marketing, as well as the managing partner of Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina law firm. Seth, your back up in the, in the beltway, you’re back in our nation’s capital, things have changed from when you left. The weather is much colder. How are you doing?
I’m doing okay. But it has been culture shock. The difference between Florida and seeing Georgia where it’s open for business, and the, the warmth and people are outside and you know, I. You know me, you’re the introvert, I’m the extrovert, I love sitting and talking with people. I got to do that. It was an awesome winter. And I come back and I drove downtown. I had an early dentist appointment, it should have taken 45 minutes I was there in 20 minutes. It was unbelievable. It’s a ghost town. It reminds me of the guff federal government shutdown. There is nothing going on in downtown DC. Florida, there’s a rush hour, there’s no rush hour in DC. And it’s really, really interesting. We have basically just support staff in the office to make sure mail gets open but the mayor’s order still hasn’t been lifted. And we are you know, again, there’s suburban offices, they’re jamming, but downtown, everybody’s still working remote. And BluShark, as you know, we turned the keys back. And that’s been fully remote.
Yeah, you know, I’m in that position now. I, you know, I ran it by all of my people in the office and said, “When do you want to come back?” And pretty much universally it was, “Do we have to? We’re good at home. We like the flow.” And even though a couple of lawyers were like, “I’d like to work out of an office one or two days a week,” even they want to be home, you know, for the most part because they’re enjoying, you know, seeing their kids get off the bus, having earlier dinners, getting to have a little bit more of a family life. And I think, you know, that’s a culture change that’s going to come even after we get done with all this stuff and everybody has their vaccines, I think you’re gonna see more people focusing on how to make their work-life balance work better for them.
Or, we don’t know. And that’s the worst part. I know you’ve been handicapping. I’m trying to handicap future and real estate needs. And it’s painful because in Florida, they’re just like F it, they’re back. Right? So my question is, when we are back, it will not be a day, it will not be a week, it’ll be months, if not years before the Northeast really says, because part of it’s psychological. I just had an issue with a longtime friend, where they heard we were down in Florida and what was going on. And it was, like, people don’t appreciate it, there’s a there, there are people and you know them, you’re in the Northeast, where they don’t leave their bubble. If you take, it’s almost like they have shifted into hermit life. And if you talk about a life that’s not that, you are somehow, you know, hurting society. They have no idea there’s an entire half of the country that’s, that’s, that’s making me look like, you know, I was the conservative person, people laughed at me that I wanted outdoor meetings. But it is, it is something that I don’t think it’s coming back quickly. But at some point, you know, people say that, but a year from now, you may want them back. You may be like, you know what, I love the virtual, but you know what, if I really want to have that culture, I can’t create that culture. Whatever it is, there may be reason that you sort of, that, right now, our memories are very short. And you may want people back and then you’re like, “Okay, what do I do about real estate?” Now, the good news is, I think that we’re gonna have plenty of real estate options for the foreseeable future.
Well, I think you’re definitely gonna find some real estate options because there are some businesses that can really function totally remote, or businesses have gone out of business. I mean, that’s, that’s the reality. I mean, I drive around our corporate complex, and we’ve got, you know, 10 corporate buildings near me, and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of open parking spaces, whereas before, there weren’t.
Well, you can’t tell if that’s because they’re closed, or if they’re remote.
Well, I can tell you right now a major corporation had three floors of one of our buildings and moved out. I mean, they’re human labor, right?
And that’s, I mean. That’s just like BluShark, right? So there are people, and they, these guys were playing hardball with our lease, even during COVID. And the place is still vacant.
So who knows? Yeah, I don’t know. So speaking of the future and where you want to go, this is something that I wanted to talk about and we haven’t really talked about it recently on the show. It’s something that I’ve been talking to you about for years. And it’s the concept, in a law firm, of research and development. And so what I want to do is, I want to throw that out there. And let me take a quick break, you’ll hear from our sponsors. And when we get back, I want to talk about the role of R&D in our law firms, because I think it dovetails into a question I want to have a conversation with you about, about how do you grow and how do you grow intentionally. So let’s take a quick break, we’ll hear from our sponsors, and when we get back we’ll be back live with more Maximum Growth Live.
Okay, Seth, we’re back, and here’s the question I have for you. I’m talking to some some of my friends in the last two weeks and they are in the drug business. They were not the drug dealing friends I had when I was in high school and college, but they are professionally chemists who work for chemical companies. And they were talking about how they were coming up and doing their budget for in their departments, R&D, and what they want to do. And I said to myself, you know, as a law firm, I’m a business too, but I don’t segregate, you know, 3% or 5% a year for something called research and development, just to see what’s out there. And I’m wondering if you do that?
You know, good question. I definitely do it on the marketing side, right? We experiment with stuff, whether it be some TikTok or some Instagram, you know. I, I am, I am still the anti-social guy, because I have not cracked the code, but I, definitely in the search side, and part of what I love is we get to experiment with stuff at Price Benowitz, which, which, if it works, becomes BluShark material. So almost like a comedian, you know, it was always the, the musician, the Paul Shaffer always talked about, you know, he tried something out on Letterman, and if it worked, you played it first round in a bar, you know, I always love that sort of analogy. But like, I, so I love that piece of it. But the piece that is sort of, I’ve probably gone a little bit overboard with was, it, sort of experimentation with different practice groups, if that’s what you’re getting at, and the idea like, you know, trying different things out to see, hey, maybe this will work. And it’s funny, because I give you flak all the time for the Jay Ruane idea machine, and the, and the idea that we should be quarantining stuff for X period of time before we roll it out. But I’m probably as guilty as anybody, because, you know, I love the fact that we diversified, but it’s also, you know, it leads to other issues, because then you have all these different babies out there, and you have to take care of them.
And that’s, and that’s the question. That’s the fundamental question that I want us to talk about today, is, as you want to grow your firm, do you think it is better to double down, triple down, five year vertical, and really go all in on that vertical and build that vertical? Or do you think the smart law firm owner, especially knowing what we’ve gone through in the last 15 months, will start to diversify once they get to sort of critical mass in one particular vertical, so that they have other niches that are working in case of economic downturn or shifts in the market? What is the right approach to this, because this is something that a lot of lawyers that are, that are now coming out on the back end, having survived something that was monumental, need to start talking about now and budgeting for and planning for and working into the year. If you’re doing EOS, maybe you make it one of your rocks per quarter to identify these things? Let’s talk about this. Because I have a feeling our perspectives might be a little bit different. So where do you come on, on this thing?
Right. So, it would make the best TV if I said, “Absolutely, this is the only way to go,” and we try to have the back and forth. But like most things in life, if we’re being honest about it, and we don’t want to be a sensationalist, it depends. It depends. It depends. That said, you know, I feel that, you know, more in moderation. All of these things can work there.
As I said, you can’t start a new vertical in moderation.
Oh, well, yes. Okay. So what I would say is, first, it depends what you like to do. Right? Second, it depends on the appetite for risk, and the bandwidth you have to execute. So for myself, I love the idea of diversifying because it’s, it’s nice in the sense that you have ups and downs, you have a cat–, the number of people have said, “Hey, you have a plaintiff’s practice and a criminal defense practice. And you know, you, you know, you have cashflow. That’s really positive.” Downside was, there was a point in time where we just did criminal, and we could say, oh, we just do criminal, we do nothing else. That’s why I marketed that way. I want the marketing to remain unique. But yeah, I would say that if I, as I reflect, and as COVID has shown, I’ve seen that you could, you only have so many hours in the day for yourself. So depending on your model, and whether or not you’re running it, my model was to bring in other people to run those verticals. The downside is you’re now betting on somebody beyond your own person. And if you control it, so it’s a pardons practice, and even though you may not be the main lawyer on it, your thumb is on it, you know what’s going on, and it’s a scalable widget, because limited amount of your time and a lot of staff time, God Bless. But when it’s something that you’re going to have to business coach that person, and that there are many moving parts or widgets within it, and, you know, something that I’ve been struggling with has been like the immigration practice where there are a lot of different staff members involved. And these people need management and oversight. That’s where I don’t have any expertise or frankly, passion. That may be something that, where we step too far and would have been better off if we had diversified less, and I put the hours into some of those further diversification, into doubling down on PI or in criminal. Soo I like diversification, but I think that they you can potentially, if it’s not a turnkey, you seem very good at identifying areas where it’s limited Jay time. Because that’s, that is the, you know, you have only so much Jay time, and you have your main core competencies that you want to get your revenue from, and you have your family, and then you have firm oversight and all these other things that, that time, I think I took a little too flippantly. And part of it was I’m going to put a bunch of things out there and see what works. It’s not like a two month thing, it could be a five year thing and, as long as it’s not losing money. So anyway, I want to hear your thoughts. What’s your thought on this question?
But see, here’s the thing. So okay, so you are in, let’s go back into a time machine, right. You’re, you’re a criminal defense practice, and you say, you know what, we want to add the area of personal injury or immigration or some other type of practice area. Are you doing that when, you know, you’ve eked out every dollar from the criminal defense market that’s available? And if not, yes, why? Why not? Why not? Because, you know, if you have a set of core competencies, you have a workflow, you have a team that works in that area, why, why, why walk away from something that is so much easier for you to scale. And say, I want to all of a sudden add another practice here. We saw this during COVID, I saw people who do criminal defense and said, I’m going to open a family law shop, because family law is going to, there’s going to be many more divorces because people are going to be at home. And now I’m going to open up this other shop and that’s how I’m going to make things happen. But let’s take if people do that in the best of times, when they still have market share to go after and it seems it would seem to me to be a fool’s errand to try to open up something entirely brand new, when you haven’t maximized every, squeezed every dollar out of your existing vertical.
Look, I don’t disagree, in the sense that I appreciate that. And that’s, I think, solid, good advice. That, but, at the same time, I think what I’ll, the caveat there is, I don’t think you need, there’s a there’s a place of diminishing returns, where you could squeeze more and that some of it is based on talent. And as you move away from the mothership, let’s say Ruane Attorneys who’s going to end up with New York and eventually New Jersey for criminal, not crazy, the way you dominated. There was no biggest player in DUI in New York, and in Northern Virginia, you could have, with your connections in the college, in DUI DLA, you could have expanded your footprint. But as you expand, you need that higher-level talent. As we know, this is when you move outside of the immediate, you know, over, under your thumb, as you do that, the piece that to me is really significant is getting talent that is senior enough that wants to do the work, but is not so entrepreneurial, they want to do it themselves. And that’s that, you know, as you move away from this.
That’s a very small segment of the population of lawyers that are available.
Right. And so, and you met last week, Dane, who’s amazing. And if I could clone him, he’s making great money, the firm is making great money. He is, you know, they are diamonds in the rough. And I thought, oh, we’ll just, and so what I then went to was, hey, almost like the Giants. I know you’re a Jets fan. But the Giants drafting concept has historically been until they’ve been misled for the last decade was we’ll take the best player available. And so my attitude was if I saw a rock star that happened to fill all these holes with the idea of being we could then cross refer and there’d be economies of scale. And academically, that’s true. I think the piece that is most important to think about is, do, do the business models work similarly, or are they different? And what I have learned, sort of my, my big takeaway here, is that from my perspective, things like personal injury, worker’s comp, med mal, the contingency world is one general widget, there are different pieces of it, but that, it has similar cashflow issues, similar client issues, similar staff issues. Right? The next piece I’d almost lump together is like the family law, criminal defense world. I know it’s not all flat fee unless you’re Lee Rosen on the family’s law side, but it’s similar. People come in, they have a problem in their time of need, it’s generally one person maybe in some family law cases, you get a second person for bigger cases and same with criminal bigger cases. But generally, it’s lower overhead, family law a little bit higher as far as staff, billable staff, versus the final piece, which would be like, let’s say, the immigration, trust and estates component, where it is a managed practice. And there are plenty of people, we know, so many friends of the show, who have crushed it in trust and estates or in family law, but I have found though used to be the hardest to comport within the system. And not that there’s not a way to make a buck, but they are harder to bring into that same family from the point of view of shared services and the management of it. Like, I feel like in criminal I’ve cracked the code on how to scale that. And it is a different, is a different perspective or skill set in those other areas that seem more, at least from my where I sit right now, today, and my, uh, my growth curve, seems more challenging to get the margins compared to doing what you laid out before, which is, hey, just keep, you have your widget, keep replicating it by geography, or level of case or what have you.
Yeah, I mean, it would just seem to me that you are really giving up great opportunity if all of a sudden you start seeing the grass is greener in other practice areas. Because as we all know, it’s not, and that every practice area takes a certain amount of intense focus, a lot of work, a lot of money in some respects, to ramp that up. And it would just seem, you know, you say to me, okay, you know, in order to start competing, you’re gonna need probably a $50,000 investment in SEO, you’re gonna need to have staff that can do, I mean, we’re talking probably, to go from zero to passable in a new vertical, you might need to invest $150-200,000 to get up to speed. I’m not saying you’re not going to pick up cases along the way, but in order to become sort of the systemized growth-oriented law firm that you and I like to have and people aspire to, there comes an investment in time, and the opportunity cost, and I’m just saying, hey, if I could take that same money and push it into the my existing practice areas, I could own, I could own them.
Well, and Jay, this is, I just had this life moment, because we all do what we like to do, right? You love the systems. If you had tripled down on search marketing, you could have been three times your size. You did very well, nothing wrong with what you did, but you’ve done, but with what you’ve done, you probably have awesome margins because of the systems you’ve put in place, because of how you’ve run your practice. Me, I love the building and creating and probably to my detriment. I know, at a very cost effective rate, how to build something. So to become the dominant player in a, in a market in DC, particularly outside of criminal and PI, I can snap my fingers and make that happen. But I don’t have the Jay Ruane discipline or interests in setting up the systems that would eat the ROI from them. And I think that the criminal practice, look, we also have Dave Benowitz, who is a, a juggernaut with legitimacy and best practices. So we had a model and could say to people, “Hey, nobody works harder than him.” People put in that… So, with criminal, I was able to replicate it with less hands on per lawyer, because of how we set things up. But the areas that have more moving parts where it takes staff to produce something, it needs a Jay Ruane-esque operation systems person. And if you don’t do that, you’re, you’re going to be in trouble. So for me, I’ve put my systems time into the injury, since it’s a plaintiff’s practice, but I have not taken, because it’s not what jazzes me, have not put that as much into some of these other areas. And it’s shown, the margins are less good. When you don’t, when you like, again, I can make the phone ring, but the drive to be as efficient as possible, which I wish I had more Jay Ruane in me, isn’t there as much. And probably, if I did, I wouldn’t be as you know, creative on the marketing side. But what you’ve been able to do, and so it’s like the grass, again, grass is always greener. I know that I, you know, it’s almost like I can make the phone ring, but how do I squeeze the juice out of the, out of the, the orange, to mix metaphor.
And this, and this comes from me, you know, reading business magazines for years, where they say, you know, “Your best customer is the customer that you’ve already sold to.” You know, for a Snickers bar, or Coca Cola or whatever product it is that you can replicate. But, you know, for the most part in our industry, your clients are one offs, right? I mean, I mean, there’s always the opportunity for a second client or a referral from that client, but for the most part, if you have a PI practice or you have a criminal practice, even a trust and estates practice, hopefully a family law practice, people interact with you once, maybe twice in their life. It’s not like you can sell them the same thing every couple of months. And so my my own thought was, hey, if I double down, and I really focus on converting as many of the people that, that come to me. And so I just said, you know what, I’m spending extra money on, you know, remarketing to people that I’ve already been to, you know, talking to people and hiring people to help me craft a drip campaign. Because if I’ve already paid for them to get to me, and they know who I am, I want to convert them as best as I can. And I don’t want us to spend money or time or effort thinking about, hey, I’m gonna bring in PI cases because the chances of that scaling in a hyper-competitive market are very difficult, whereas I know I’m already halfway to owning one area, one niche. And that’s the that’s the quandry. I’ll go right out and tell you, I don’t think you should diversify. I don’t think you should build new verticals, because all it does is make you build verticals. And then either you invest more and more money and you detract from your, your, your golden goose, the one that’s making you, the, it’s taking away your time from that. Or, you’re wasting money on something that you don’t necessarily have passionate about, you’re doing it just for the money. Or, or you’re taking attention away from and allowing people, the competitors to come up in your golden goose space. And so there I, to grow your firm, I don’t think you should be thinking about adding verticals until you know you’ve squeezed every dollar out of the ones that you have. I’m going to make that statement.
And I think like most things, I don’t like extremes. I like diversity. I think that here, from a, from an academic business point of view, absolutely. But for the people that diversified and had something other than criminal, they were pretty happy during COVID, right? That there was, that there was that diversity. I mean, criminal’s one of, probably the hardest hit of any of these verticals outside of tourism. And you know, it was that, so, to me, I like, I like it, I get your point. But look, don’t, don’t follow my model, I may have gone too far on diversity, diversity. I thought, and again, one of the things that I sort of, I bemoan and wish I had, I have, I wish I could do better at, is the cross-selling within. And because, it’s amazing, even within our PI clients come back for more PI. Do we get the occasional criminal client that needs PI? Yes, but not nearly at the rate that academically it should be. So, to me, I was counting on better cross-selling within the practice than I would have been, what I’ve seen, you know. Intuitively, I would have thought it’d be more. But I think that that’s too extreme a position, that yes, you could get more if you stayed focused, absolutely. But for many people out there, if you can somehow diversify, those are things that will get you through some of the lean times. And it also depends on who you are. You know, you know me well enough. It’s like it gives me an opportunity to think about something differently. But you know, look, I think what we’re both looking at as the grass is always greener. Did I tell this story about my neighbor?
No.
I don’t know if I shared this. So, I’m sitting at, my lawn is objectively not very good. It’s historically been a bunch of dirt with some crabgrass because the kids rip everything out. And I finally, you know, got, got a guy who sort of made it look halfway decent, but it was still just adequate. And the lady across our backyard, sure, her father-in-law gardens in his retirement, and their lawn is extraordinary. And she looked over the fence one day looked at my mediocre lawn and says, “Oh my God, that’s so beautiful. Your grass is awesome.” And I said you realize lady you’re the living embodiment of the grass is always greener. I mean, it was literally that was it, like, that’s where it came from. And I feel it like, yes, you don’t want to do it because the grass is always greener. Like I’m doing criminal, oh, there’s more money in family. I get that. And I agree with you. But I think diversity is not such an awful thing. And while we’ve seen some people that have focused and dug really deep into one area and have done very, very well and have built, you know, really substantial practices, I personally believe that diversity is something that has merit. It’s just a very difficult thing to execute.
Alright, folks. So that’s our opinion when it comes to diversity. We’re going to take another quick short break and when we come back, we’re going to wrap up the show. I got something I want to talk to Seth about, about Google My Business, and it’s going to be interesting. So stick with us, we’ll be right back with more Maximum Growth Live.
Okay, we’re back here, folks, with the end of the Tuesday show and there’s one thing I want to bring to Seth’s attention, and it’s something that a friend shared with me, and it was interesting. We talk a lot about Google My Business on the show and what I found recently, will blow your mind. I found a lawyer, here in Connecticut, who has set up his Google My Business, at the post office, and called his post office box, his unit. So the law firm is at, you know, the post office address unit six…
That may be a federal offense, but uh…
Yeah, you can’t use the post office for a private business like that. So yeah, it definitely is, but Seth, you know, it’s a creative way to get around the placement. Because, guess what, the post office is literally next door to the courthouse. So he’s getting that, as, you know, his button is right, where the traffic is, to some extent…
Couple things. I don’t think that’s your road to riches. And I’m actually familiar with this concept. And I’ll tell you why. When, when Virginia, when I first came into business, the state of Virginia did not allow virtual offices. So what Google ended up hating later, Virginia was, it was against the ethical rules, that is more, they changed that. But, so, when I started, you could not use a Regis and follow their ethics laws. But there are a lot of criminal lawyers that didn’t want to use their homes, and PO boxes were the one exception you could use. I think if you’re running a real practice, it’s not, it’s not sustainable, Google will, like, I don’t know if they’re gonna flag it because you have to be able to have a place, but they’re certainly not going to let that be a multiple office play. So I don’t think it’s a road to riches. But it is certainly creative in this case, you know, if, as, as people go, if you’re a competitive market, somebody will go and change that to be a PO box, in which case, it looks kind of ludicrous when somebody’s trying to find their lawyer.
Yeah, it’s just, it’s just interesting to me. I mean, the place has got 37 Google reviews, so people are actively using this GMB to leave reviews etc. But I just think it could it could hurt your long term.
Oh absolutely, I do not recommend that. Before we wrap up, I got one other thing. For the antisocial lawyer, I have been playing around a bunch with Clubhouse. I now have two, I have two clubs, they’re sanctioned by Clubhouse. We, every Tuesday night at 7pm, the SEO Insider, which is where I bring in different thought leaders in digital search and we’ve had a great conversation in there. It’s been a lot of fun. And then on Fridays, I hope you’ll join Jay, I set up a Max Growth Clubhouse club, and hopefully we can continue the conversation with people outside of our own little fishbowl. It is amazing how many people listen to our fishbowl, we really appreciate it. We have, when I was traveling to Florida and Georgia and meet people saying, “Yeah I listen every week.” And it’s certainly, we are having an effect. And I figured I will, I will try to be slightly less antisocial, and see, see how this new platform treats us.
You know, it’s funny. It’s amazing how when you start to travel, and your world starts to collide. I saw our friends, one of the Jersey guys, Bill Colarulo, today, commented on another friend’s post, and I’m thinking, how are the two of these people friends? And why are they friends? And its worlds colliding.
And it happens all the time.
I’m like, oh my God, how does Bobby know Bill and how does Bill know Bobby? What does this mean for me in the middle? And it’s blowing my mind. So I’m getting on the phone with buddies.
So I have a law school friend who’s in Umansky’s circle in Orlando, he’s like, doesn’t realize that Umansky has this huge national following. And he’s just like, how do you know Bill? And I’m like, everybody knows Bill!
Everybody knows Bill! Well, everybody does know you, Seth, that’s, I mean, that’s the reality. And one of the things I want to do, in addition to your Clubhouse, is invite people to join our Systemising Your Law Firm for Growth Facebook group. We have the group, it’s growing every week, we’re getting more and more people that are interested in joining, I’m going to be sharing a bunch of systems that I have this week. I’ve been putting together some over the last couple of days, I did some Lume recordings just to sort of walk people through things that you can do, actually, on social media, some social media systems. So I’m going to be sharing those in the group in the coming days, and I would invite everyone to join there.
It kinda proves the point that I made during, during the last segment which was, you know, when you love something, like, clearly this is, you know what, I need more hobbies, and I took up tennis and I could use a hobby and instead you’re creating Looms for law firm scalability.
Yeah, that’s what I do in my spare time that you know, but I, I swear this, this year, once I can get my vaccine starting next week, I am going to start getting out. I’m going to, you know, I got the peloton. I’m riding the bike, I’m going to get back into golf, I think, so I’m just outside getting some fresh air in my lungs. You know, that’s, that’s one of the things I have on my plans for this year. But anyway, folks, I want to thank you for being with us today. As always, you can always catch the show live, every Tuesday and Thursday here, live on our Facebook page. If you ever have any comments or questions, be sure to give us a message down below or send us a DM, we’re happy to talk to you, going through any problems that you might have or any questions you have about growing your law firm. But for now, I am Jay Ruane CEO of FirmFlex, your social media marketing agency for lawyers. And that guy over there, down in Bethesda, is my man Seth Price of BluShark Digital, as well as Price Benowitz. And we are Max Growth Live. Thank you for being with us. We’ll see you on Thursday. As always, you can syndicate this show on the Maximum Lawyer Media Family so you can get them through their podcast, through our podcasts, through any of our videos, we try to put as much out there as possible. And please join us on Thursday, on Tuesday, on Tuesday at 7, and on Friday at 1, right? Tuesday at 7PM, Friday at 1PM, on Clubhouse, the new social audio app. And this way we can get with you.
I know that we’re wrapping up, but I’m gonna have a la- I never have a last word, I’m gonna have a last word today. The thing that I think is worthy of a discussion, perhaps next Tuesday, is Clubhouse, which I’m enjoying and I see interesting value, but I think like all bright shiny objects, needs to be used in moderation. And that for most, like, I like it, here is a platform to talk about ideas globally. But that it’s, to think it’s the road to riches for most b2c lawyers focused on a single geography, is, it will take a lot of critical mass there in order for that to work. And so it’s, I don’t want to be one of those people “Hey Clubhouse is the answer to all your issues.” I think it’s an interesting thing, just like Google Plus was back in the day. It is almost like an insider marketing, you know, world, not that there aren’t people doing best DUI or, or best plaintiff’s practice issues and there are amazing groups that are popping up. But that as a business development channel, I think that, like many things, you have to be worried that the people that are marketing, that are good at bringing people in, it may not be in the best interest ROI for your time compared to other activities. And I just want to make sure that just because I’m talking about it that it is not like, hey, we got to drop everything and that’s that’s the next you know, thing that you need to go all in on.
Yeah, one of the things that I’ve been really reticent about jumping on Clubhouse is the fact that it is time sensitive. You know, if you’re on Facebook, you could scroll back three weeks. If you’re on Instagram, you can easily go back and look at people who posted pictures 7,8,9 days ago if you haven’t been on it for a while. In Clubhouse, if you’re not listening, it’s in the ether, it’s gone. Now, I’m sure Clubhouse is recording it, but it’s not something that you can decide to go back on. And quite frankly, listening to something takes a level of attention that blindly scrolling through a feed doesn’t, you know.
I think that’s part of the attraction. It takes us back to the days before DVRs when, or when you were listening to the radio and talk radio and something happened it was gone. There’s a certain excitement that I have not heard since early talk radio with that live host bringing people in, taking callers, that, it reminds me of early Larry King, and I think that, that, that sort of like old school effect is part of the allure. That said, you know, you know if, I’m not sure that this is, again, it is fun to experiment with, I’m trying to be less antisocial. At the same time, I just want to make sure that we are putting that caveat, that this is not drop everything and this is there, but if you enjoy it and you want to check it out, why not?
Absolutely. So be with us this week on any of our live shows as well as Clubhouse will be there for you. But for now, I am Jay Ruane, he is Seth Price, we are Max Growth Live. Bye for now. Have a great week and we’ll see you on Thursday. Bye.
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