Seth and Jay discuss the steps a lawyer must take when scaling their firm with Rjon Robbins, founder and law practice coach from How To Manage a Small Law Firm. Rjon has worked with law firms for over 20 years and his experience has helped lawyers create sustainable businesses and claim ownership of their time.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I’m one of your hosts Jay Ruane, the CEO of FirmFlex, social media marketing for lawyers, as well as the managing partner of Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm in Connecticut. And with me, as always, coming to me from the jungles of the Amazon, because that’s what it looks like you’re at Seth, is my friend Seth is the founder of Blushark Digital, an SEO firm for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Price Benowitz, your South Carolina DC, Virginia, Maryland, a lot of action in DC the last couple of days, especially yesterday with the inauguration but DC will get back to normal. But once you leave the South Pacific or wherever you’re at, it will be good. So how’s your week going? Seth tell me what’s new?
Well, it’s going well, the greatest zoom background ever behind me. But it was a fun week, the presentation for PubCon went well. And it was just neat to sort of like, you know, being sandwiched between people like joy and Darren Shaw and others. Just quite a trip. But it was fun. It was nice to see lawyers and the needs of law firms being discussed and thought about at the highest level of digital marketing. So that was a cool experience.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it certainly is an honor to be able to grace the stage with a guy like you who’s elevated himself to such high levels in the digital space. But that’s one of the things that I do love about you is that you not only know this stuff and love this stuff, but you, you’re like a Johnny Appleseed, you’re always willing to offer more information that people and say, Look, this is how you want to do it. And you want to do it the right way. And all those things. And that’s one of the things that we are all blessed to have gotten to know you over the years. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t said, Hey, Seth just told me what to do. And it got results. So that’s just phenomenal now that your voice is getting out there to even more people just remember us when you’re on the big stage, and we’re still in the audience, eating the brown bag lunch. That’s all I have to say.
Well, you know, this has been quite a ride. We’ve talked about doing this show for how many years, not as I go, even before the year before there was zoom before anything. And the idea that I just get the heck out with you on a regular basis and get to brainstorm, get ideas back and forth. And, you know, one of the things we talk a lot about has been, you know, how to get different resources that we’re not good at into our, you know, portfolio, and excited to have Rjon Robbins here today. Because, you know, he’s probably the largest coaching program in the country, and to the areas that I’m sort of fascinated by the fractional CFO, fractional COO roles. And, you know, a lot of people always are talking to us, as we have done this show about, like, where do you put your resources early on knowing that you only have finite resources and that when you’re in the process of growing before you can have your own ops guy or your own finance person? How do you put those pieces in place? So I’m excited, I think this is going to be a great discussion of somebody who thinks very differently than you and I, and how he’s put together a program that has, you know, that has no, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of raving fans who have found their home within his system.
Yeah, you know, it’s very interesting. I know, having known you for years, you know, I’ve expressed my frustrations and some of my problems, you know, getting my own partner to buy into doing certain things. I mean, I guess, in some respects, you know, when you’re a solo, you chart your own course. When you have a partner, you have someone you can rely on. And, you know, you and I have spoken for years over some of the problems I had, you know, being in partnership with my father, who was an old school, do good work, and people will hire you type lawyer, and I wanted to grow, and I wanted to grow systemically and methodically and with marketing, and that was the antithesis of everything that he believed in. And so it was a constant battle. And had I known about an organization. You know, when I hung my shingle in 2000, something like how to manage didn’t exist. There was really nothing out there for lawyers who wanted to do what they’re doing now. I mean, now we’re in a position where there’s so much more and the same for you, there really wasn’t a resource to go to. And so you wind up being a blind man, I guess. in a dark room, just sort of feeling it out trying to figure out what you got to deal with next. And it’s always a challenge. And now there’s so many resources out there. And it was amazing that you were able to connect with Rjon and bring him on.
Now, what I love about what we’re doing over the course of these first weeks of 2021, is the idea that there are resources out there that you’re not alone. And while there are support groups, and there’s, you know, I love the Maxwell community, I love the guild, knowing that they’re for, you know, their stuff that is right for every person out there and trying to just, you know, open people up to the way that different people think about it, I think, you know, really valuable, I’m gaining a lot as we sort of, you know, think and grow with each of these people. It’s just fascinating to watch how they have, you know, looked at scaling and working on people’s law firms from the outside.
Awesome. So what we’re gonna do now, folks, is we’re gonna take a quick break, you’ll hear from our sponsors, and we come back, we’ll have the Maximum Growth Live interview with Rjon Robbins from How To Manage A Small Law Firm, we’ll be right back.
Hi, I’m Jay Ruane, one of the founders of FirmFlex 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.
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. Statistically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group grew 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 has my back.
Rjon, great to have you here. The first thing I had to ask this does not look like a zoom background. Where are you?
This is not a zoom background. We are hosting our first live quarterly meeting for our members since January of 2020. So this first step back into whatever the new normal is going to be. And what you see behind me is a couple of our workshop rooms being set up. There’ll be an air wall. Dividing that when it’s all said and done, we’ll have like eight or 10 of those set up by the day today.
So hopefully, it’s not the permanent new normal, but the immediate new normal as far as how you can meet in person that’s awesome.
Looking at that normally has four to 500 law firms in one big room and chopping it up into like 20 little rooms.
You know, you’ve been inside so many law firms over the years, and you’ve worked with many lawyers. What do you see normally as the missing components that the lawyer, you know, you come to, you go to law school, you come out, you’re ready. You know you’re ready to hit the ground running, but what do you see as the deficiencies, and what do you see as generally the strengths that people should be building upon? You know, across the board. I know it’s different for every person, but just want to start you off generally, as far as what you see in your perspective on working with lawyers.
Well, you know, first of all, we, I mean, I’m gonna, I went to law school too. I learned all the same things in law school that everyone else learned in law school, the business or in a law firm, which is nothing, in fact, that they taught us nothing in law school, about their business, we’d have been better off, right? Nothing instead of coming and saying, listen, we’re teaching you how to practice law, we’re not teaching you anything about the business of running a law firm, that you have to figure it out on your own, we’d be better off than then what they tell us, which is implicitly, if not explicitly, just be a good lawyer. And somehow the magic law firm management elfs will come along and take care of the business of the law firm for you, which of course, sets lawyers up to have this huge complex when the marketing isn’t working. Oh, it must be I’m not good enough lawyer. Otherwise, the magic law, firm management would reward me with good marketing when the sales isn’t converting, when the processes and systems and procedures don’t just magically appear overnight, by themselves, when the staff doesn’t show up, recruited, hired, trained, onboarded, managed with key performance indicators and metrics. Oh, that’s because I’m not a good enough lawyer. With the financials aren’t under control. I could go on and on and on. But the short answer to your question is, what’s the number one thing that I see missing? Lawyers buy into a false premise. And the false premise is that there’s an or when there should be an and. Is it a profession? Or is it a business, take out the word or put in the word and it’s a profession, the practice of law is a profession. And also, the business of the law firm is a business. And you know, the world’s greatest lawyer is going to just be the smartest person in the room with nothing to do and no clients, if you don’t put a business underneath him or her to support and elevate to help them be the best lawyer they can be. So the number one thing I would say is they buy into the false premise of the or when really, it’s an and.
So, you know, you’re really preaching to the choir with Seth and myself about that, because, you know, we understand that we’re both as well as you Rjon, we are all attorneys by profession, but we’re legal service business owners. And I think that’s one of the things that people need to do. A lot of people come to the how to manage, how to manage foundation there. And they’re lacking a lot of pieces of that puzzle. If you could speak to the people out there who haven’t joined, how to manage who are really sort of fumbling around. What do you think is the one thing that they need to embrace right away and learn a skill? What’s the one skill they could say if I don’t know anything else? I have to know this in order to get me on the right path towards success as a legal services business owner, is there one thing that they should really make sure that they know as a foundation?
Can I answer that differently depending on how they’re situated?
Absolutely. We love depend answers.
Depends. I’m going to give one answer for staff off, and I’m going to give a different answer if they don’t have staff.
Okay, cool.
The one thing to do, if they either way, if they do have staff or don’t have staff, the number one thing to do is write down your definition of what a successful law firm is. The law firm is a business, the business is supposed to work for you. You’re not supposed to be a slave to the law firm, you’re not supposed to be a slave to your business. Your business is supposed to work for you. You want to have a successful law firm. I’ve never been anyone who says I want to have an unsuccessful law firm. But it’s really interesting what happens when you ask a lawyer who says I want to have a successful law firm. And you say great, you know what we’re lawyers. We know the first thing you do when drafting a contract is you define all the terms right? define success. How are we going to know if your law firm is successful or not? Now I’ve done this with literally tens of, thousands of lawyers over the years, and I have found that everyone that I talked to when we really drill into it, success generally is defined by three criteria. Financial, personal and professional, financially, how much net income does the business need to give you how much total owner benefits, that’s your W-2 salary, your K-1 profit distributions, and all the expenses that hopefully you’re running through the business, if you have a good tax strategist advising you how much total owner benefits does the law firm needs to give you, for you to live the way you want to live, not the way you’ll settle for, not for what you’ll put up with, not based on everything you can do without but how you honestly genuinely, sincerely want to be living, financial success, personal success, if you make millions of dollars, but it ruins your personal life, and you have no time to invest with your family, you have no time to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you have no control of your time either. I don’t consider that to be a successful offer. I don’t consider it to be a successful law firm, if it merely generates a lot of financial rewards, it also has to give you a life, it’s supposed to work for you. Right? So what is your definition of personal success going to be? How are we going to track that? How are we going to measure that? How are we you know, if we’re heading in the right direction, we’re not. And then of course, professional success. You know, we all use our firms. As a way to express a point of view or to express an idea. You know, the firm is a reflection of who we are supposed to stand for something, we’re using our law firms, we’re using our professional services firms to make a positive impact on the world, based on who we are and how we see the world. And this is how the world can be and should be. How are we going to measure that. Ultimately, professional success is what gives lawyers the most satisfaction. But if you don’t have personal success, and you don’t have, it’s like, you can have a long list of very important things to accomplish in the day. But the first thing on your to do list had better be get fuel or charge up your Tesla. Because if you run out of fuel, nothing else is going to happen if you don’t have enough financial success. And if you don’t have enough personal success, you’re never going to achieve the professional success that everyone likes to talk about. So that’s what I would say to everyone, whether you got staff or not. And all you need I mean, the only technology you need is a pen and a piece of paper, right to write down using these things called words. Right use words to write down your definition of the word success. If you can’t do that, then maybe you got to go back to law school. Because I mean, that’s basic, basic, basic skill that all lawyers have, which is why it’s kind of inexcusable, that there’s lawyers who run around out there, they spend their whole careers, and they never take the time to think through what’s my definition of success gonna be. And because of that, they’re untethered. There’s no crate, they can’t we don’t have a criteria to judge whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. Because we don’t have any definition to judge it by if they have a staff. Keep using that pen and keep using that piece of paper and write down your systems. Write down what you want. Write down what you think, you know,
I love hearing that word systems.
Yeah, I know you do.
There, you should know what to do. And if you don’t do it exactly the way I have in mind, I’m going to scream and yell.
Now, to a certain extent, people start there, you know, before we even get to some of the outsourced resources that are available. You know, when you see somebody, let’s take somebody, a lot of our audience are sort of beginning of this curve. What do you see as some of those first key hires that will give you the bandwidth to allow you to focus on those three things rather than just being on the hamster wheel? What do you see as sort of the first couple of key hires? You know, crowdsourcing what you’ve seen work over time?
So I have worked with these are documented facts. Tens of, thousands of law firms, no exaggeration. There’s all I’ve been doing for 20 years like outside of the world of small law, firm management and growing small law firms. There’s a million things I know nothing about within the world of managing and growing high-performance successful small law firms. I know everything in the world there is to know about this much of the world outside of this little thing I know nothing. So with based on the experience, what you just said the first thing that you should hire is the thing that you do best not the thing you do worst, the thing you do best is the first thing to replace yourself with. Everyone does it the other way around. Because intuitively, it makes more sense to do it that way. Right? The counterintuitive approach is to hire is to replace yourself in whatever you’re best at.
Interesting, counterintuitive to what I would assume, because we talk a lot that people do what they like to do, present company included Jay and myself. So that if you, you know, one of the fears that I would think based on that advice is, if you replace the stuff that you love doing that you’re really good at, that you’re then left with the stuff that you may not be as exceptional at. And while it may get done, it’s not what you love. Or it may not get done as well, what are your thoughts on that because to me, my intuition would be like, keep what you love, and make sure I mean, the general conventional wisdom is outsource what you don’t or what you’re not great at.
So let me tell you the end how the story ends, right? The end of the story is if you do it the way I’m suggesting to do it, you get to wind up doing only the things you love doing. And you don’t ever have to do the crap you don’t like doing. And your business works for you. If you give away in the beginning, all the things that you don’t, that you’re terrible at. And you just hide out in the little corner of the stuff you love to do. That story ends with you on a hamster wheel, never getting off of it.
The production of the work. So if you happen to be and geek out on marketing like Jay or myself, you have a chance of doing certain things. I did it depend upon what that already that you won’t do is
Seth. You and Jay did exactly what I’m describing. You’re just at the end of the story, which is why you now get to reap all the rewards and do all the fun stuff you love to geek out on doing right? So you know, but you asked me, What should someone do when they’re at the very beginning of this process of growing a law firm? What is just them by themselves? Right? First thing to do is take the thing that you’re best at and replace yourself. Why? Because number one, you know how to supervise it you know how it’s supposed to get done. You can spot-check it you can hold people accountable for it. Right? If someone if you hire someone you know whether they’re good at it, whether they’re not good at it, you can you can spot check the work and they can never hold you hostage, right?
Yeah, cuz if they leave, you can step right in because you can do that stuff.
Number grow is the bane of our existence. So that again, it was whatever, whenever that bookkeeper left over the years, it was like the worst day of the year because, you know, all of a sudden, you’d have to be like start if you didn’t have enough of an infrastructure built as you’re saying is for the stuff you know, scale that first.
The stuff you know the stuff you’re really great at, replace yourself first. Then you start shoveling the shit on the stuff that you hate doing and you figure it out. And the process of figuring it out. You document some policies, you document the procedures, you document some checklists, you document how you want it done so that when you hire someone and by the way, since you hate it so much, you’re not lollygagging around, you’re on a mission to get a documented systematize and off your back. On the other hand, if you’re just hiding out doing the stuff you love to do because you love doing it so much and you’re so great at it. You never want to get that off and back. You love it. It’s your comfort zone. Meanwhile, everything that’s going on to run the business. You don’t know how it’s being done. You don’t know why it’s being done. You are being held hostage by everyone on your team because you don’t know anything about it. It’s just it look Zig Ziglar said if you want to get conventional results, do what everyone else is doing. If you want to get conventional results do what is conventionally done. The average small law firm in this country grows at you know how fast the average small law firm grows in this country. Growth Rate gross revenue, you know 95% per year and law 100 and law 200 They grow at 2% per year. Our members are growing at 30 and 50% per year, year on year on year on year on year. If you want to grow at 5%, Then just do the things you love doing. And you know delegating, which is really abdicate all the rest to other people and you are abdicate If you don’t know how to do it, you can’t delegate it, you can only abdicate it. Right? You want to get 5%. If you want to go from 100,000 a year in revenue to 105, and go from 105 to 107, from go from 170 112 and go from 112 to 115. I mean, 20 years from now, you might finally have a financially successful law firm. You want to take your firm from 100,000 to 150,000 to 250,000 to 500,000 to a million in like three or four years. This is the path less traveled. You hire someone to replace yourself in the thing you’re best at first.
That’s a really it’s a really interesting point. And I think it definitely is something that a lot of people in our audience can really sort of reframe their decisions over 2021 as they’re looking to where they can grow their firm is thinking about strategic growth hires and what the right hire is. And replacing themselves may be the answer to that question to get them to where they want to go. And it falls back to your idea of, well, how do you define success? Because if you don’t have that defined, then you don’t know what decisions to make.
And then you might as well just do the things you like doing every day, right? Because you’re just wandering around, you know, in Alice in Wonderland, where do you want to go, I don’t know that anywhere, we’ll go in any direction, we’ll do, right? And you know, you were using the word replace. And I want to make sure that everyone understands, when I say replace, I don’t mean hire helpers to assist you. I mean, hire someone who is as good or better than you. So they can literally replace you. And really buy your freedom.
You know, one of the things I’m a big fan of is putting an org chart of where you want to be and figuring out what you eventually need to fill in. And I feel like one of the the assets you guys have done a nice job with is putting together a fractional CFO, fractional COO, program, etc. Want to talk a little bit about sort of the opposite of that and how that’s developed. Because it seems like it’s one of those things that there are so many things that you need. But if you picked one and hired a person at the market rate, you would drain your resources and not sort of stymie your growth. So you’ve put something together
And Seth, I can talk to this because about 10,15 years ago, I hired a fractional CFO who had no experience in the legal space, and I spent a ton of money and got no value from it. None whatsoever. So I’m really interested in the answer to this question.
So what exactly is the question you want me to answer?
We just discussed the development of the fractional program that you have, which is one of the things that people sort of associate with how to manage, you know, very positively that, that there are these opportunities to leverage talent that you could never afford independently, but that leveraging them as a collective really allows people access to talent that allows them to grow in a way that they couldn’t grow otherwise.
Right. So how far back in the story you want me to go?
If we go 45 or 78, as far back as you want to go?
Okay. I went to law school, I told you that I learned all the same things everyone learned in law school enough. I had my own law firm, it was a disaster. I didn’t know anything about the business of running a law firm. To make it very, very, very long part of this story short, I ended up getting recruited by the Florida Bar law office management assistance service. Why did they recruit me they recruited me because I called them so many times. And I religiously implemented what they told me to do and things got better and better and better. And I said the right thing to the right person at the right place at the right time. And he said, How about coming to work for me, and I went and became the first lawyer in the history of the state of Florida, to become a small law practice and management advisor with the Florida Bar. Still today, the only lawyer in the history of the state of Florida to serve as a small law practice management advisor. In that role, I basically split my time three ways. One is I went out on disciplinary investigations when a lawyer had violated the bar rules because of the law firm management problem, which 54% of our grievance is filed nationally, or originate as an avoidable law firm management problem, FYI. It shows up in the end as a bar grievance or a malpractice action, but it begins in the very, very, very, very beginning. The seeds of the problem are planted as a law firm management problem. So about a third of my time, I was out in the field, fixing broken law firms, lawyers, law firms that had violated the bar rules. And these aren’t bad lawyers, and they’re not drinking and using drugs and stealing from their trust account and saying screw the clients. These are like people who really care, great lawyers who really, really, really care about their clients. And they’re just emotionally devastated that they got themselves into this trouble. Because no one ever taught them about the business of running a law firm. When I wasn’t out in the field, fixing these broken law firms, I was doing CLE speeches. So they sent me all over the state of Florida, doing CLE speeches in front of thousands and thousands, and thousands and thousands of lawyers, teaching everything from marketing, to sales, staffing, to financial controls, goal, you name it every all the seven main parts of a successful law firm. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was in the office fielding anywhere from three to five calls a day, from lawyers on every aspect of starting, marketing, managing, buying, selling, growing, you name it a law firm, they were calling, and I was like having to walk them through it and give them spot coaching and laser coaching around that thousands and thousands and thousands of these conversations every year, these are documented bar record facts, by the way. And what became abundantly clear to me is that lawyers don’t study business, right? Most lawyers studied history, philosophy, literature, English, history, Poli Sci, right, I mean, myself included. And then they go to law school where there, I already talked about what they don’t teach us in law school about the business around a law firm, and then they get out of law school, and no one teaches them about the business around a law firm. And, you know, name a business, name any other business, where you would want to advise one of your clients where you would allow one of your own clients, or friends or family and say, Yeah, you should invest in that business, right? The person who’s who’s asking you to invest in the business, they don’t have a business plan. They don’t have a marketing plan. They don’t have a sales strategy. They don’t have documented processes, systems or procedures for how anything’s supposed to get done. They don’t have job descriptions, and they have no financial controls. And there’s no one minding the store. But she’s a great chef. He’s the world’s best technician or whatever. Hold on that please. You would never invest in that business. Why not? Because it’s obvious the business wouldn’t be successful. That’s why, right. But lawyers, we I did this, I did this also, I started my own law firm. I didn’t have a marketing plan. I mean, lawyers start businesses, that they would never advise if lawyers, sue people, lawyers, there’s a cause of action called fraud in the inducement, lawyers sue people for doing things to their investors that we do to our friends and family when they invest in our law firms. So it became really obvious that I could either spend a lifetime taking lawyers through business school, kicking and screaming, because they don’t want to go. Or I could just give the law firm what the law firm needs, which is access to an experienced professional service manager, called a professional, legal administrative, there’s a profession, called the professional legal administrator. There’s an association of legal administrators with thousands of members all over the world, who are in the profession of this of managing professionally managing law firms. The problem is that a good professional legal administrator is going to be making $100 to $150,000 a year. And so small law firm just it just doesn’t make any sense. So that’s one I hit upon the idea back when I was with the Florida Bar, of I wonder if there’s a way to like deconstruct this, and create like a fractional timeshare solution so that owners of small law firms could finally have access to the kind of high level professional experience management services that owners of big law firms take for granted. That’s the medium version of a very long story.
Yeah, it did. It did for me, Seth. And I have a bit of follow-up question when you talk about it. Now your organization how to manage has been around now for like 16, 17 years now. Right? You started, I think your LinkedIn since you started 2005.
I can do it. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Okay. How To Manage A Small Law Firm we have 80 full-time employees as of January 2021. Just to put this in perspective, we manage over 450 law firms in all different practice areas all over the country. We have 80, full time and full time employees. I’ve been doing nothing but law firm management, growing law firms since 1999.
Okay.
This business has been in existence for 10 years.
Okay. So in those 20 years, right, how do you see the legal economy has changed or matured? since you first started out in this business? You know, do you see that there’s a lot more business minded lawyers, do you see that there are fewer business minded lawyers? Okay, let’s talk about that.
First of all, these are great times for solo and small law firms. With only better times in the future. This is a great, great time to have a solo or small law firm. We could do a whole other interview, I could spend hours talking about why, but very, very encouraging time to be running your own small law firm right now. Changes. That was your question, right? Changes that I’m sitting in. Okay. Um, well, I mean, obviously, technology, right. You know, when I started 20 years ago, if you wanted to start your own law firm, you needed like, $100,000 of working capital, you needed like a server, and you need a big office, and you needed a T-one line, remember T one lines. You needed a lot of stuff, right? And this is how big law firms kept their best rainmakers. Like with golden handcuffs, right.
entry was so much to go out on your FB today is nothing. I mean, correct? Nothing. Right. So we’re in a high-speed access, and you’re in.
Yeah, okay. So that’s number one. Number two, Legal Zoom has been a gift from heaven. For the entrepreneurial, small law firm own. If you’re not underneath thanking Legal Zoom, then you’re don’t you’re not really a marker, okay. Legal Zoom, has been and will continue to be a gift for solo and small law firm owners who are entrepreneurial minded, who really geek out on marketing. Three, all of the competitors to Legal Zoom that are coming, are also going to be gifts to solo and small law firm owners. Next, Washington, DC, Arizona, Florida is about to allow non lawyers to begin to own equity stake in law firms that is going to destroy big law firms, it is going to just decimate big law firms and the small law firms while on their crumbs. I’m sorry?
why is that going to decimate the big law firms.
Because you’re gonna get private equity that’s going to come in and buy them up, and merge them and consolidate them and start running them differently and doing all kinds of different things.
We’re a business mindset, not a firm administrator mindset, you know, meaning not a bunch of lawyers voting on stuff, but with one person with a profit margin as the one benchmark,
Right. So what’s gonna happen is the best run big law firms are going to become even bigger, even better. The badly run big law firms, which is a lot of them, are going to completely fall apart. And when they rip these, when they tear this apart like this, the crumbs, hundreds of millions of dollars of crumbs are going to fall down. And small law firm owners are going to be able to feast on it for at least a decade. It’s going to be phenomenal. On the other hand, I mean, unfortunately, I should say, still, the majority of small law firm owners are still hung up on is it a business or is it a profession? Right? I don’t have a business, a law firm. Why should I have a business plan? Why do I need a marketing plan? Why should I have key performance indicators? Right? And they’re gonna get and they’re gonna get left behind the the gap between the best run law firms and the worst run law firms is going to become, I mean, we’re already seeing it with this pandemic. Our members, we’ve got a record number We’re have our members who have had record year in 2020. I mean, we’ve had 20, something law firms that broke the million dollar barrier solo lawyers, single shareholder, small law firms for the first time in 2020. And that momentum is just going to carry them, carry them carry them carry them, precisely because there’s so many law firms that when the pandemic struck, they didn’t have a marketing, they didn’t have a written business plan. They didn’t have a marketing plan, they didn’t have a sales plan, they didn’t have financial controls, they didn’t have a clear definition of the word success, they didn’t have access to anyone to help guide them and advise them, whether it’s how to manage a small law firm or anywhere else. And when and as soon as the waters got a little choppy, they fell apart. And like basically forfeited the game to the to those of us who stayed in it.
You know, one of the things that interest me is that you are able to look into so many law firms and you see them grow from pure infancy into solid, substantial, well run legal operations. And I’m curious from your perspective, as someone who went to law school and interacted with a lot of law firms, in your role in Florida, and in the years, as you’ve looked in over the last five years, and seen some of these niches that people have come to you and helped you grow, and help them grow those niches. Do you see some verticals as being opportune, the opportunity exists within a vertical for some explosive growth, that, you know, people who are looking, you know, I’m a PI or I’m a Family Lawyer, I’m a criminal lawyer, that, you know, they think along the traditional lines, do you see any areas where there can be some explosive growth that people might say, you know, in this area, maybe it’s time to cast off all the lines and really go all in on a particular niche? Is there anything that jumps out at you as a way for law firms to grow over the next decade in niches that you wouldn’t otherwise have thought about until today?
That’s a great question. The answer is yes. But we have to first go back. And, you know, and, revisit and know our history, right? It’s like that saying, If you don’t know your history, you’re bound to repeat it, or you’re doomed to repeat it. It’s amazing. You gotta know the history of the legal industry. Right? Lawyers have been starting marketing managing, growing successful law firms for, you wanna guess how long?
100 years.
Over 1000 years. The patron saint of lawyers died 500 years ago. He wasn’t the patron saint of lawyers, because he was the first lawyer, lawyers and legal and practicing law and law firms was already a well-established profession, when the patron saint Saint Thomas Aquinas, was born, lived and died. What we think of as practice areas, right. What we think of as practice areas was defined by telephone directory salespeople A for apple, B for banana, right? P for personal injury, F for family law, I for immigration, I mean, this is where practice areas came from. Okay, so let’s just get clear on this. These are completely arbitrary boundaries and lines that were put on a map, drawn in sand with a stick by salespeople of old fashioned telephone directories. All right. So the answer to your question, Jay, is that the opportunity is to practice is to do is to stop defining your niche by the kind of work you do. I do family law, I do immigration, I do bankruptcy. Stop defining your niche by the kind of work you do. And start defining your niche by the kind of person you serve. That’s an explosive opportunity. The lawyers who begin defining their niche by the kind of people they serve, are going to build communities of prospective clients. current clients and former clients who all have that in common, how are they define it. And then they will be able to curate those the legal needs, the accounting needs, the insurance needs, you name it for those people. So How To Manage A Small Law Firm, for example, we’ve got a very, we got a specific type of person that we work with, we work with all different practice areas, but a specific type of person. And if you come to one of our live quarterly meetings, you’ll notice they’re all kind of some are black, some are white summer, Asians, some are Hispanic, we got about a 5050 split between men and women, gay, straight, tall, short, but they all have kind of a, a unique perspective on the world. They all tend to be entrepreneurial, they tend to be the kind of people who really embrace personal responsibility. They’re unapologetic, about about wanting to make their own lives better. By making other people’s lives better, they understand that the law firm works for you, you’re not supposed to work for your law firm, there’s a certain philosophy, there’s a certain point of view, there’s a certain sensibility that they all have in common. And because they all have that in common, they all have a similar set of opportunities. And they all have a similar set of problems. So we have 450 of these law firms, who all have a similar set of problems who have a similar set of opportunities. And that’s why we’re able to spin off all these other businesses so quickly. I mean, during the pandemic, I started, I started a direct response video marketing business. With no website, with no with no name for it. I started it literally by sending a text to some of our members and said, Hey, I have an idea for how to pivot during the pandemic, will you come and let me experiment with you. And we have a million dollar business now. That’s awesome. So the law firms that start to define their niche by their by the type of people they serve, rather than the type of work they do, are going to have an opportunity for explosive growth.
I mean, this brings me to, I know our time is getting near. And I just did what you talked about something that you and I have talked about offline. But I’d love to sort of I think Jay would be really interested in which is one of the things that we talked about people as they’re starting their firms, so people with more advanced firms where you have resources, one of the things that I’d love to see you do is you create an infrastructure so that you can do that you can pivot and open things. This is stuff that Jay has all these great ideas. But by putting a management team in place, when you get to that point, you’ve been able to do stuff and continue to sort of have different divisions that can roll out over time. Talks a little bit about how you set that up. Because something that, you know, as the guy who started a second business, as Jay has, you know, I love the idea that once you have that infrastructure in place, an idea like a video division can pop up with speed that you could never dream of if you were starting flat footed.
Jay, Was that your question? Or do you want to add to that?
That was pretty much the question. That was almost identical the words I want to use. So yeah, that’s great. Let’s find out about that.
All right. Can I curse? I don’t know your audience. Absolutely. Let me tell you. I fucking hated my life. For a couple of years as I was building this business, I shoveled so much fucking shit. It’s unbelievable. All right. I didn’t get to do hardly any of the stuff that I love to do in the beginning of this business. Right? I took all the things that I was best at. And I gave it to other people. And then I got down and just shoveled shit, and built processes and systems and procedures. So I could get rid of that and never have to do it again. Why did I do that? I did that because I start off with my definition of a successful business. I had a clear and listen. Looking back at it, it was all wrong. But at the time, I had a clear Northstar. I knew what I was trying to achieve financially. I knew what I was trying to achieve. Personally, I knew what I was trying to achieve professionally. I had a strong motivation. I knew why it mattered to me. It mattered enough to me that I was willing to to live for a few years, the way most people aren’t willing to live so that I could live for the rest of my life the way most people can’t even imagine getting to live. I mean if I I told you how I get to live my life today. A lot of your viewers literally would think that I was just the biggest bragging asshole they ever saw. I live so much. Like, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even imagine living the way that I get to live today. Back then. And it’s all because I built the systems, I built the processes, I built the procedures, and then I could give them to other people because here’s the thing. You guys geek out on stuff that I hate the stuff you guys love doing. Seth. I mean, you love what some things you love Blushark.
I love marketing, I love building websites and optimizing them getting people to find them who have never heard of them before. That’s what drives me.
Oh my God, I fucking hate that. I hate doing that more than I can even explain, I hate that. Right? Good news, because I was willing to do it for a little while. I learned it well enough, I never became an expert. I’m not an expert in that. But I learned it well enough that I could create some processes, create some systems, priests and procedures, and then hire people who actually love that shit. You know what else I really don’t like doing Jay, I know this is gonna break your heart.
Social media.
I hate documenting processes, procedures, that wiki that you created. That sounds like torture to write. But I did that kind of thing. badly, I might add. But I did it well enough so that I could afford to hire people, I did it well enough. So that it worked well enough so that I could afford to hire someone who could do it. And now I’ve got a team of people who love that stuff. They love it. I hate it.
I can come work for you.
Right, but the point that I’m trying to make is you build your team by systematically replacing yourself, not by holding on to the thing you love doing the most. Now, the end of the story I mentioned earlier, is that once this is all done, then you get to go back and just do the things you love doing. I turned down. I don’t do private consulting anymore at all. I turned down speaking engagements, I turned down VIP days, I turned down all I turned down stuff today that 10 years ago, five years ago, I would have crawled over broken class to get those things. Now it’s like, you know, respectfully, no, thanks. I don’t like doing that. Because now I’ve created that opportunity for myself. And this is exactly the same thing that you can do with a law firm. It’s the same thing we do with all of our members. You know, are you willing to live for a few years the way most people won’t? So you can live the way the way for the rest of your life the way most people can’t? And if the answer to that is yes. Then what I’m saying makes perfect sense to you. There’s people who are thinking that sounds that doesn’t make any sense to me. They haven’t found the right motivation yet. And that’s okay, maybe today will be the day you find that motivation.
Wow. That’s, you know, that’s really awesome. And it’s inspiring. And I want to thank you for coming in and sharing those stories with us. Because I think, you know, some of the things that you said today, obviously, they make me think but I think there’s, you know, there’s viewers out there, you know, sitting at home on a Wednesday, looking at, you know, looking at Facebook or sitting at home on a Sunday night saying I can’t imagine going to work the next day. And you’re giving them is the permission to say there is a better way of doing it. And if you just run towards that, and do it the right way you can give yourself the vision that you want and the success you want. And I want to thank you for giving that message to our people out there because that’s really truly what we all deserve. At the end of the day is to have a career and have an operating functional business that gives you the life that you want. Seth?
It was great. Appreciate it. You know excited to see the first conference back and get your feedback because, you know, as you bring people together, we can’t wait to be out there and interacting with people. I’m glad that somebody is, you know, at least test the waters and see how this goes.
A comeback and I’ll report how this goes we got a whole COVID testing clinic built downstairs in this hotel, like a VIP thing we set up for our members. And I want to thank both of you. Because you know, there’s thousands of lawyers who will watch this who will who never heard of me before who may decide they never want Hear me again. And that’s okay. But I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, I get that. But hopefully, because you both built successful businesses that now work for each of you respectively, and that gave you the freedom to, to pursue this project, hopefully, that hopefully this will give some lawyer out there an idea and insight and aha moment, inspiration, whatever that can change his or her life. And they’ll build a successful law firm, by helping other people because that’s how you build a successful law firm, by helping more people. So thank you both.
I love it. All right, folks, we’ve got Rjon Robbins with us. Thank you so much for being with us. And we’ll be right back with another portion of Maximum Growth Live.
Well, Seth, just a phenomenal interview. I mean, I got a bunch of takeaways, you know, and really reframing how I look at things. You know, there’s a lot of good stuff, in what I have to say, in the last 40 minutes or so, what are your summer takeaways?
No, I, you know, the way he looks at the world, as a business owner, I find fascinating, because with each person in the marketing space, and this goes back to late Steven fairly, you know, all of the sausage making may or may not be right for you, but the idea that you have somebody who has thought these things through, and that has provided different resources that if they make sense for you, that we you know, we both have struggled finding a CFO that makes sense. You know, when you get people from outside the legal space, more often than not, it blows up, there’s just too much of a learning curve. And so the idea that somebody has deconstructed the law firm, and provided those resources fascinating. And it just, you know, excited to get feedback from our audience. Some people, some of our audience and raving fans and past guests are our people that have been part of that process. And just curious to see how, how our audience views that philosophy towards helping people build and scale their firm.
Yeah, really good stuff. And I could sit here and ramble on about all the wonderful takeaways that I have, I’m not going to do that. Because I think, you know, after going through this whole thing, I just want to sit and digest it. And maybe we could talk a little bit about the takeaways from the first three weeks of of these coach interviews on Tuesday because I think there are a lot of similarities that we can find between the three of them, obviously, defining your vision is one of them. But one of the things that we keep hearing about set is systems and you know, my love for systems. And I wanted to invite all of our listeners and all of our viewers to join a new Facebook group that I created in the last two weeks, along with Seth and a couple other people have already joined it. But it’s called Systemising, your law firm for growth. And it just allows us to really exchange systems. So if you’re on Facebook, and you want to join a group, where all we talk about is systems, please join us enjoy the systems that I’m putting out there regularly help will help you develop the systems that you need. No other talk not about referrals, not about areas of law. It’s just about Systemising your firm. And that’s what we’re going to focus on. So I’d invite you to do that. But Seth, we’ve gotten long, we’re getting back into our summers where we start going long with this stuff. So I got to wrap us up and let it go. But I want to thank you for being with me this week. He is Seth Price from Blushark Digital, SEO for lawyers, as well as Price Benowitz and I am Jay Ruane of FirmFlex, your Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers. And we are Maximum Growth Live. Thank you for being with us. Seth, any final words?
No. Have a great week. It’s a new dawn a new day for the country and take that same energy and excitement and hopefully drive your firm the same way. Absolutely.
Okay, folks, we’ll see you on Tuesday. Bye for now.
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