Jay Ruane

Hello, hello, and welcome to this very special edition of the law firm blueprint. It is Thanksgiving weekend, normally we would be dark. But we wanted to come to you this week weekend, to check in with you to see how you are doing because set over there. And myself. We're very thankful that you spent even a little bit of time with us this week this year. And so we wanted to take a moment to say thank you to you guys. We also have a special guest who's coming up to talk about something big that's happening. Seth who's coming up later in the show, we got Moshe who has put together one of the preeminent online business of law conferences for the law firm growth Summit. We'll be talking to him. And we've gotten free free attendance for anybody who's watching this show set that as we know it is Thanksgiving week, you got a packed house is that we part of our reason like we do this to give back but we also do this to get away I will have both sets of grandparents plus by my kids, one of my kids friends is visiting from Hong Kong. It's it's a little you know, traveling circus as we go from place to place over the holiday. Yes, so my wife, my wife, is the center of the linchpin of her family. So we've got my my brood, my six plus my mother in law, her boyfriend, his, his three sons, we've got my brother in law, his four kids, we've got, you know, and we wind up usually picking up well, my brother's coming, we usually wind up with, you know, 2025 people, but you know, it's the big Italian family, you know, my wife does she stuffs her turkey with lasagna. So I guess I got a question. When you pose all the time, I'm going to post this one a little because we just saw, you know, Twitter did a poll on Trump back. And to me, I'm like, if people knew that, that actually matter, they might have voted differently. But or, you know, more and more voted more frequently. But my question is, as I do this, what do you have both sets of grandparents? How many of our listeners who have are lucky enough to have their their in laws in their parents alive? Or some combination thereof? How many of them everything is copacetic? And great? And how many is it where you need some adult beverages to get through the holiday period? I'm curious if we could somehow pull this as to where that phone, I'll tell you right now I need adult beverages to get through a dinner with my family, or with my in laws, but I gather how does the dynamic change because when it's your people, you can at least it's your hideout in my bedroom and edit versions of the law firm blueprint, or I take the dog for a long walk. That's that's what my plan is to do. At some point, the dog wants to come home and you stay.

I mean, it's it's it's always a challenge. You know, we have a lot of big personalities. And a lot of people who like to voice their opinions about a lot of things. It was my my mother in law is,

is very, very anti Trump. And I have a nephew who has picked up on that. And we'll you know, poke the bear, and really poke the bear. And if you get my mother in law in with a glass or two of champagne, and you start poking that bear,

there's, you know, smacking on the table, and Machina is jumping? Well, I have a lot of fun. It's a lie. I have an extended family member that like when I hear nonsense, I'm like, where's this and I literally google it. It's like, it's literally lifted off of Fox. So I'm like, I've gotten to the point where like, one out of five are legitimate, like there's something that's mainstream, that they're just ahead of the curve on, which is rare. But most of the time, it's some random conspiracy theory. Luckily, we don't have any Rogan people in our audience, because I have good friends in the marketing space. And they'll come to me with, you know, earnest, real issues. And like, never heard of this before. Turns out, it's Rogen going, you know, making a left turn somewhere and bless him. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's what it all comes down to. We hope that your dinner table, or brunch or whatever it is that you're doing is free from derision, free from attitude free from conflict, and you have a very, very lovely Thanksgiving. So what I think we're going to do now, Seth is we're taking a quick break, we're going to bring in Moshe, Moshe is going to tell us all about the love from growth summit that he has coming up at the beginning of December. There's some really great things that he's added to this incarnation of the event. And I'm really sort of excited. I know I'm speaking I'm pretty sure you're speaking right. And a lot of friends of the show are going to be speaking on some wonderful topics and they did some cool things this year. So why don't we take a quick break we'll bring in Moshe will talk a little bit about the conference. And then then we'll be able to wrap it up and just make this up.

It goes show saying thank you to everybody sound good. Sounds great. All right, folks, we'll be right back with Moshe about the law firm growth Summit. We're back, Jay. So it's an emotion here talking about his upcoming conference. Welcome, Moshe. Hi, thank you so much for having me, James. You guys are guys are awesome. Well, the law firm growth Summit, you know, you were like one of these visionary guys, you saw that before. Before the rest of us knew how to do things online, you're like this is this is the way the future. So you may be the smartest guy in the room here to have thought of basically figuring out how to leverage technology. You know, we got an upcoming conference, which I find special, because you always are one of the few select guys who focus on the business of law. Tell us a little bit about the upcoming conference. Yeah, absolutely. So just so real quick backstory for the creation of the law firm growth Summit. All good ideas come from our own necessity, right. And I'm raising a young family, I really don't want to go and attend a bunch of in person conferences. Personally, I would love to I love meeting people in person, but there's just so many days that I can travel, and I have my own business coach that I'm a member of, and my own things that I'm doing. So for me to get out there and and go to a bunch of legal conferences is, is a hardship. And I started to think about, well, what if it's a hardship for other law firm owners? What if it's a hardship for them to be able to attend the conferences? And then when we started looking at the conference landscape, which is really the only place that you have? I mean, a lot of attorneys say, well, they don't teach business in law school, right? And that, and we kind of hide behind that. But the reality is, is that so then you need to get educated. So where are you going for education, where you're going to these conferences, and the conferences are not even focused on the business of law? They might have a topic on intake, they might have a topic of marketing, but they're not focused on the beginning to the end, what is the business model? And how are you going to be profitable. So many lawyers come from Big Lots and start their own firm, and then they're trying to do what Ben was doing. And it's the wrong business model, you can't succeed as a small law firm trying to do what bigger law firms are doing, you have to step into that slowly, and they're missing those baby steps. So I had an interestingly, through the podcast, and through all the people I was interviewing, I started to develop connections with a bunch of leaders and experts in the industry, each one of them has their own unique set of skills and, and, and expertise that they bring to the table. And I said, Well, what if I create an event that is virtual doesn't require you to travel is free, doesn't require you to buy anything to pet to attend. And we can bring together all of these experts under one roof, and really give you all the pieces that you need for your law firm growth. And that's where the law firm growth summit was born. And yes, we were pre COVID, a virtual event. Everybody went virtual during COVID. But it was an opportunity for us to look and say, What is everyone else doing? And how can we elevate our brand and create an experience that's even better. So we heavily invested in technology to create a conference platform or to be on a conference platform that really fostered community really gave people an opportunity to experience almost exactly what they would in an in person event without ever needing to leave their office or their home. And we have a vendor Expo booth area, we have a a breakout session area, a main stage area where our main stage sessions happen from, we have a networking area, which has like a really cool feature. It's like a speed dating thing where you're connected with somebody randomly for three minutes. And then if you want to continue, you can extend the timer. But you can also say, Hey, I like this person, I want to connect with them after I click a button. And if both you click the button, the system will make an intro so that you can continue offline after the event. We also have within the platform, the ability for people to have these impromptu meetings. So if you if you realize, hey, there's three people from law school, I haven't seen, let's get together we'll do a quick four person meeting. And you could do it right there in platform. So we really, we chose a platform that would foster community that would give us the opportunity to present the material in a way that was easy for you to consume. And at the same time, make it enjoyable for you to be there and make it a place that you want to hang out for three days. That sounds awesome. That's in there. I was gonna throw one thing jail throw flip to you after this, which was just one of the things I've enjoyed about it in the past was in addition to the substance that, you know, Jay and I have gone to, for instance, PubCon over the years, right, where there's all these speakers and you learn stuff from the speakers, but it's the people outside in the hallway where you're speaking and I feel that the evening sessions that you created, where you have panelists sitting around with questions coming from the audience in a more relaxed setting was one of the areas where people could dive deeper and get some additional nuance beyond the standard, you know, present

Seth Price

Patients are all valuable, but it's how you leverage them that I think is most valuable.

Moshe

Yeah. And it's interesting because that's the evolution right? The first year that we did it, we had those those nighttime q&a sessions. The next year, we did entertainment a night, we hired a band comp, and we had a band present, or play on stage and pipe that out to the audience. But what I found was, is that

it really, the band wasn't very well attended, you know, that extra fluff and extra flair wasn't really what people were coming for. And it's not really necessary. You've got your own entertainment locally, like people that spent an eight hours with us during the day, and they don't really want to spend their evening with us, too. So what we did this year, given opportunity for breakouts, I think is what it is, which is, which is awesome. Jay, you know, one of the things really interesting to me is that you did actually break it down into into segments. So depending on your revenue, because I can remember the number one I mean, I love the idea that it's actually something that people can attend for free, because I can remember starting out and me having to make a decision, which one thing was I going to attend that year, because that's all my budget could afford. I'm not Seth Price, who goes into place to play and set this, he's got to have more frequent flyer miles than Dave Portnoy. And if you don't know about that Google of how many Amex points Dave Portnoy has from Barstool Sports. I mean, it just blew my mind last week. But anyway,

Jay Ruane

you broke it down by where you are sort of like revenue or where you are in the growth of your firm. And I thought that was a really interesting way to approach it. Because while there is a lot of aspiration to work up to the next level, you really can't get to legacy building until you've gotten your fundamentals strong. And I think that's really one of the benefits of your summit in that you can, you can really sort of crushed the fundamentals, and then be able to move up and start to take the nuggets from the higher levels as well. So what what inspired you to instead of going broad, really allow people to focus on the area that they need to have helped. But

Moshe

it's very interesting, because what really inspired me to do it was to attract more of the larger firms to the event, we were attracting a very large percentage of solos and startups and like, you know, brand new attorneys or people who just haven't gotten past that, that initial startup phase. And we wanted to cater to a wider audience, we wanted to invite people who have achieved a higher level of success to say, Hey, this is an event that is meant for you, it's designed for you. And I figured the best way to do that is to create topics that they're going to be interested in attending and, and being a part of. So what we did was we we very specifically went out to our leaders, our experts, the influencers in the industry, and we said, look, here's here's the audience that we're going to be attracting, we're breaking it down this way. And we have three categories, startup zero to 250. K in revenue is and these are just broad strokes like you can you can look at the topics and realize, hey, I can really benefit from that zero to 50k, revenue startup expansion to 50k to 2 million, and then legacy creator in excess of 2 billion in revenue. When you look at the firm's at those levels, the challenges that they have are very different, like somebody who's zero to 50k has to figure out how to how to market themselves and how to bring in those cases recurring, you know, frequently and consistently. And then they have to figure out how to start hiring people, but also delegating to those people. When you're in the 250 K to 2 million, you've figured out how to delegate but now you got to figure out how to find the right people how to Team Build, how to create processes, and how to make it smooth for your for your staff. When you're in the legacy creator stage or beyond the 2 million you have other problems you're worrying about. You're worrying about, you know, what is my succession plan you're worrying about what is you know, what is my wealth building plan beyond this? You're worrying about how do I extract myself from the business and have it just completely run by itself, which is one of our keynote speakers this year. We're bringing back Mike McCalla wits last year, he spoke about profit first, but this year, he's gonna be doing a talk on his book, his book topic clockwork, which is how to get your business to run on its own without needing you. And you know, learn how to take a four week vacation is basically you know, what he's going to cover.

Seth Price

And I would say, you know, most of the things that I think is in look, Jay and I talked about it on our show, I see it within blue shark talking about not wanting to take SEO clients full out till 350 400. Not that you don't need a website, but you really can't dedicate, I think the skill set needed there. And the reason why it's cool to have something that is free for those people is that, you know, yes, it sounds great. But if you're not doing the work and you're actually paying people to do the substantive lower, there's not a lot of fat there. And at some point you may be upside down if you don't handle it, right. So the idea of doing the four week vacation and doing all those things may be aspirational in those first, in that it's one thing to set your firm up for success later. But you still got to live through those lean years in order to get to the point where there's enough fat or enough revenue, to be able to afford the work to be done so that you can take the four weeks off.

Moshe

Yeah, that's our other keynote speaker that we have is Jennifer Gordon Cuthbert, and she's the owner of Atlanta personal injury firm. And she's going to be talking about how she how she is one of the 10 women owned businesses that made the Inc 5000 this year. And she did that while raising her children. She did that while being a mom, she did that while being a parent. And it's really important, you know, to your point, like to understand that there is this progression and the growth of your business. But you have to be able to see the future, you have to be able to see what's possible, so that you can understand how to navigate there. And it doesn't have to happen with sacrifice now, right? And it doesn't, you don't have to give up everything else in order to be successful later. And I think that's really important for people to understand is that if you if you if you understand that the Nate that the the business model for the success of a law firm has to do with hiring people delegating to them, and getting to the point where ultimately all those people are doing all the work, and you're doing it now. But as you bring people on, you're starting to offload that stuff to them. If you ask any firm owner, and you guys would probably agree with me, looking back at your journey, the thing you probably change is hire people faster. Right. And that's really, that's, that's really the name of the game. And it's something that is very hard for people who are early in the journey to really wrap their heads around. So I think that being able to see other people who have stepped into that role who have done those things, and seeing how they've achieved it and being able to then just follow in their steps and follow in their footsteps and do the same thing. I think that's really something that we have an opportunity to provide for everyone.

Seth Price

You know, I'll give you the last word, Moshe, but you know, i, j and I talked about this all the time. When do you hire? Yeah, this

Jay Ruane

is this is like our whole show. Yeah, basically a conference that's about every topic that we talk about, from week to week to week to week to week. And it's just proof positive that these are the subjects that matter to people who are growing and scaling their firm. And even if you're not growing and scaling, if you want to maintain this stuff really does matter. And so that's what makes a conference like this so valuable to everybody.

Seth Price

Absolutely. Most Sure. What's what's, what do you want to leave people with?

Moshe

Look, I you know, I'm not an attorney. I'm not one of those people who says, Look, I've built a multimillion dollar law firm, here's how I've done it. What I am is a business person, what I am as an MBA, what I am is is an accountant, and I understand the numbers, I understand the business model, I understand what makes you successful as a business owner. So you have to make a choice. Are you going to be a successful attorney? Or are you going to be a successful business owner? And that's the crux of the of the matter when you start your own law firm is deciding which which role is yours, which one are you going to be playing. And if you're going to be the successful business owner, then you want to come to the law firm growth Summit, you want to get your MBA on law firm growth, because three days there is going to really help you propel your business forward. And I mean, we make this claim make make 2020 2023 your best year ever. And I think that you can do that if you if you play full out for three days at the law firm growth Summit. Awesome. I agree. 100%

Seth Price

Thank you so much. Both of those awesome, we'll be right back.

Jay Ruane

And we're back set that was fantastic. I mean, I'm excited looking forward to this. I blocked out on my calendar, the three days where I can focus and quite frankly, I gotta say I do like the fact that I don't have to go to a conference you know, absolute December but I'm not a big traveler guy.

Seth Price

And like and this year that's what ended right you're very selective. I felt like I A enjoy it. Right. I enjoy going meeting new people getting ideas, every conference. I'm like, No, what I was really for the first time pushed over the edge. I went to a last conference in on the West Coast and I was like this is too much. And it was just a tipping point for me. That said I still came away with some amazing nuggets. And I don't want to you know, this isn't like hey, you always get something but I find that it does keep me going. There's been some discussion, I feel like the the proliferation of conferences and it is a proliferation has almost doubled if not two and a half x the number that you would reasonably want to be at where there are cool speakers doing cool things and that the the levels are rising. You just had the the VISTA Bill Biggs leadership group do do one. You know MTL is doing a second one in Arizona which district is that are the laws are changing? And, you know, they they've each, you know, raise their level, they're doing cool stuff. But the question is, is it too much, and the idea that you can, you know, be able to focus on something for a certain number of hours, but then spend time on your job for part of the day and on family? You know, I think it's, there's nothing like getting together and breaking bread. But you know, for those that either have economic or time where we, you know, we talked about here, people who are in that startup growth space, leaving when you're actually producing the work and need to grow it, yes, you need the idea. So I don't want to minimize it. But if you can get some of those inspirational ideas to get you from the 250 world to the 500 world where there's enough fat on the bone, so you could do some work, you could hire some people to me, if you can grind that part out. And I'll sort of pivot to a moment, we talked about Gary Vee over time, I know you're less of a fan than I am. But it's interesting to see his metamorphosis from a guy who talks about grind, grind, grind, he got a lot of criticism, because people were dropping dead from two jobs, to benevolence. But if you see his common theme, and at least a third of his content, is on yard sales and how to make a buck on the weekend in your spare time. And that is very doable, right show up. And the idea that I believe that that first 250 is in a way, a lot of analogous to that how do you make something from nothing. And that's really like before you can afford real staff, there's no office manager, right? You may or may not have intake, you know, you have very, basically you that I believe that you're in that type of a situation where they're getting away, while important, very important, it's certainly not going to be regularly. And the idea that you could get advanced substance and make yourself think to help yourself, get over that to the point where you Yes, you can take two or three days away from the office more easily. And it's not in lieu of vacation. Right. So to me, I'm excited

Jay Ruane

for this, it's come a long way. Because says when you and I started going to conferences, we were going to legal conferences, about practice area stuff, and nobody was talking about business. And we were finding each other in the back of the room to talk business. And now talking about business has become a whole community. And it's fantastic to see, I can only imagine where my firm would be today. If I was starting with such ample resources that are out there. I mean, you can be drained from a firehose, in some respect. If you're, if you're just starting out, and I see people or hey, you know, they, they're like, I hung a shingle, I need to get to my first million. And I feel like saying we'll slow it down. Let's do this methodically, incrementally, and get you there so that it's not a flash, and then and then it goes away. But that's one of the benefits of going to these conferences, whether online or offline, is that you will are allowed to see how other people have done it, and take the best from that, that you think can work for you. And when I was I was,

Seth Price

and look, and part of it is the relationships, right. And as we've seen, relationship, business relationships can be fragile, they are fragile. And the idea that building enough of a group, because some of those things break along the way. I mean, look, think about it from the time I met you there was one DUI organization there now to know, you know, and you're one of the few people ironically, who's been able to sort of navigate both. And I say, you know, but it's a testament to yourself that you know, that it wasn't an either or that you can you can, you know, through giving back, which has been the name of your game for the reason we became friends all these years back was in fact that that whole that whole world, so I feel like it's figuring out almost like, you know, starting junior high school high school, like who are your friends? And who do you want to build with? I'll leave with this, which is, again, harder from virtual conference all the possible because to me, it's always the connections you make afterwards. But to me the advantage of the conferences in general, if I if I think back to like, I'll take the white collar work that my law partner Dave Benowitz does, right federal work, that's a very referral based business. And I was wondering, hey, could I become friends with all the senior people and they'll just refer me work. And I gotta tell you, historically, I have not seen that as a sustainable model. There's always a guy who picks the right horse and get and gets work from but generally what I've seen is that the old guys grew up together, and they refer back and forth to each other and now we are the approaching old guys where you know, and that two year old Yeah, I think we're the same age but like the but the the

Jay Ruane

hairs on me, bro.

Seth Price

But the idea being that when you build and grow together, those are the people that send stuff back and forth. And that yes, you can get it from anywhere you want that expanded circle. Don't get me wrong, but it's that core group of your compatriots. And so I find that these conferences are a good way to sort of create that larger raving fan base and Buddy group that you grow with, and that it's funny because now there are groups you know, that are junior, that are not sort of part of our world. And not that you don't want to be friends not that you're too old. And house, I'm just saying that, you know, there's a saying that you refer to people you've spoken to in the last two weeks. And so if I were to dovetail with some of the stuff we see on social media, and the fact that you're able to be there, whether it's, you know, a Ken Levinson is a great PR lawyer in Chicago, not a digital marketer, not a TV marketer, but a guy who's made his name speaking on trucking around the country, he posts photos of him and partner eating at restaurants all over Chicago around the country, it reminds you of him. So every time I got a case in Chicago, this is a guy who's there who's great at what he does, he's not talking about trialware. But similarly, if you have that, that fan, the only reason I know him is going to a conference in breaking bread. So I think that like to get there, you need to get yourself to the point where you can afford to be out of the office and have enough money where the and resources that you can do that. virtual conferences are great. I think that as you as you develop that there's definitely a benefit to that mixture.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, I mean, it works for me, I love, I love being able to bring this information and take it in, when I'm in my office, and I'm able to be home, you know, at six o'clock and have dinner with my kids. That's that right now. It's a point in my life. That's what that's my priority. So it works out beautifully. For me, but folks, that's gonna do it for us this week here at the law firm. Thank you so, so thank you so, so much for being with us. Of course, you can catch us anywhere you get your podcasts by looking at the law firm blueprint, be sure to give us a five star review, leave us any sort of notes that you want. First down here, in the notes section of the show, you'll have a link so that you can sign up for free access to the law firm growth Summit, and follow along on any of our social platforms. You can catch us here, Seth and I are always looking for you to slide into our DMS. Let us know what you want to talk about. We're happy to talk about it's interesting that you that that last topic that you brought up about. It triggered some stuff that I want to talk about with you to prep for next week. So we got some good stuff coming for you guys in December in January, and all through 2023. We look forward to spending all that time with you. Thanks again for being with us this year. Happy Thanksgiving to bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai