Welcome to another episode of The Law Firm Blueprint #summerseries! In this episode of The Law Firm Blueprint, hosts Jay Ruane and Seth Price are joined by Cesar Quintero, a leading expert in the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to discuss EOS growth tactics. Cesar shares his journey from founding a meal delivery service to becoming an EOS Implementer. The discussion dives into how EOS can be applied to law firms to improve efficiency, scalability, and leadership structure. Cesar provides valuable insights into the roles of visionaries and integrators within a firm and offers practical advice for EOS growth tactics, regardless of the firm’s size. The conversation also covers the challenges of change management and how to effectively roll out EOS principles throughout an organization, even in firms with longstanding employees.
#LawFirmGrowth #Scaling #Coaching #SummerSeries #LawFirmBlueprint #EOS
Links Mentioned
Hello, hello and welcome to this edition of The Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane and with me as always is my man Seth Price down there in the Price Benowitz and BlueShark headquarters. But we are joined, along with us today is a phenomenal, phenomenal person in the EOS space he’s going to tell us a little bit about that, and how different people can apply it to their practices. It’s Cesar Quintero. Cesar, thank you for being with us today on this special session.
Thank you for having me, guys. Jay, Seth. Thanks. I’m excited to share stories and insights.
So one of the, Cesar, one of the things that stands out is you have this dubious designation of the largest EOS shop or firm as you call it, in the country, that it’s scaling EOS, I can imagine, scaling law firm is not nothing, scaling EOS is not for the faint of heart. But because of that not only do you have people that you’ve coached, but you now have a whole firm of coaches and have done some really neat stuff we’ll talk about a in little bit where you, you’re attempting to bring this to the masses throughout Latin America, which I find fascinating. So touch just a little bit about, a fair bit of our audience, they’re familiar with EOS. Conceptually, traction has been the cause celeb, fireproof is one offshoot in the legal community, but there’s no shortage of excellent EOS coaches. Tell us a little bit of what you, how you see this for law firms, how you see best fitting into, and where you see law firms succeeding and where maybe law firms don’t get as much out of it as they could?
Yeah, I think you know, so with law firms, I’ve happened to have several law firms, as clients, and it’s been interesting to see that you know, a lot of times when when law firms get to a certain point where it’s beyond the attorney or the attorney, sometimes they don’t want to practice law that much anymore, or they want to scale their practice, or they want to go through the different places, it’s hard for them to get the steps on getting there. So I think EOS as, and as for most companies, it’s, I like calling it, it’s a way to decentralize yourself as the owner, as the entrepreneur, as a main source of income for the company. And it’s it just establishes the steps to create an alignment with your team, a process of accountability and transparency. And a healthy team. You know?
When I first was looking at EOS to me, I just wanted to be able to have regular, a regular cadence of meetings, I didn’t understand what more there was. And it is a lot more right? I mean part of it is making sure you communicate, but it seems that, you know, as firms grow, we talk a lot about, here about adding managers and God, God forbid, God willing, you know, mid level managers that as that happens, you know, you don’t sort of you don’t start a law firm thinking, I want to hire mid level managers, you start a law firm saying, I want to like, create, I want to go to court and do something, or in my case, build something, but you don’t really think about what it’s going to take once you get there. And that’s why for a lot of people, you know, best, worst, you know, we’ve had Verne Harnish on here, we’ve we’ve had, you know, the founder of the E-Myth on here, there, a lot of people who have done different things of organizing companies. But it seems that this was a, this spoke to a lot of lawyers because of its simplicity.
Yeah. And I can give you a little bit of a background on how I got into this. Because the reality is I started my company when I was 23 years old. And I started in the food industry. So I had I had no idea what I was doing at the time. At 23. I started a meal delivery company. So we cooked and prepared healthy meals, and we delivered to people in their office. Now the funny thing is that today that’s that’s very simple and very common, but this is 2003. So it’s pre UberEats, pre-Facebook, pre-Google Maps. I had a logistics company before Google Maps. So that was insane. So, you know, I was in Miami and healthy, delivery, convenience. I was I was in the cusp of a huge wave. So I thought I was a great entrepreneur because my company kept growing. But it was mostly I was riding a wave of healthiness, of convenience, of delivery. And we got to a point where, you know, I was growing the company like crazy and I was doing everything for the company. I had 37 employees, 17 drivers, we were delivering 1200 meals a day, within three hours. It was crazy and madness. But I was doing it all myself. Like I was answering the phone, I was driving the, the truck I was I was, you know doing the things, and my work started at 5pm when everybody left is when I started working right? So that’s when I read the book Traction and I also read Verne’s Harnish Rockefeller Habits and different tools. They eat Michael Gerber [inaudible], and all these things, and I started piecemealing things together, because that’s what we do, right? We read books and we’re like, oh, this ain’t good idea, this is a good idea, this is a good idea. And we start putting those things together. And what I realized is that it was a, I was complicating the process even more. It wasn’t until I hired an EOS implementer that they’re like, no, the magic is in the simplicity, just narrow it down, pare it down, don’t add all the stuff at once. Just do things as as basic as possible. And that’s when within six months, my company went completely, the other, the opposite direction where now almost nothing depended on me, I already had a management structure. I didn’t know they were managers. I had people that was working for me, but I didn’t know how to delegate to them. So I started delegating better, having better meetings, having all these things. And that’s when, you know, I kind of got out of the day to day and started working more on the strategy and the growth plans. And all these things. That eventually let me to sell my business in 2016. And that’s when EOS approached me. And they’re like, we don’t have anybody in Miami, why don’t you start doing this for other companies. And I’m like, I don’t know if I’m good at this, right. So I’ll try. And I realized that that was a true passion I had. But what the whole segway of this and the reason I want to frame it this way is because then I started to be becoming a consultant. Because I started doing this for other companies. And I’m like, I’m not a freaking consultant, I don’t, I don’t want to just do this and teach. I wanted to build another business. So what I realized is, I started and I started as most attorneys do, it was me and an assistant. And unlike I run my practice, I have my own clients. And I hired an assistant to manage my practice and help with the emails and the follow up and all this stuff. And in 2020, I said, you know, I don’t, I don’t have more capacity, like I need to start having more time, I need to free up time because I can’t take on more clients. And the worst part was that most of my first clients, you always start cheap, right, as an attorney, you start with lower fees, and you start with all, the same thing happened to me, I started with well, you know, nobody’s gonna hire me at higher fees. So I’ll just write down my fee. And then I started getting so booked, that I didn’t have enough time for myself, right. And I couldn’t get clients that wanted to hire me at a higher fee, I didn’t have time to service them or to give them this, right. So when I started the firm, it’s not a law firm, but it’s a consulting firm, it’s the same thing, right? If you really think about professional services, we all go through the same thing. We are the product, we are the service, we’re selling ourselves and our time. So what I said, You know what, I’m going to start using EOS, even if it’s just me and my assistant, and we’re going to start adding the level 10 meetings, and we’re going to start having these weekly meetings and making sure that we put these things into practice, right. And I brought in three other people that wanted to do what I did, and I started coaching them and training them and teaching them and but then I realized that little by little, if I wanted to do that I didn’t have time to really do my work. So that’s why an EOS was a true gem. Right? And, and this is where you start adding is like okay, who, who do I have that’s better than me on managing this system. So what do I have that’s better on me and these things, so I added another assistant. And then another assistant, and little by little I started forming a team of members that would manage our practice for us and, and EOS allowed me to see that on, different tools and we can get into it, but how the accountability chart maps out on who we need? And what, what are those roles they need to be doing. So what am I hiring for? And then using the level 10 meeting to really understand what’s in the way this week? And what do we need to focus on, we’re using the rocks to really focus and prioritize and then using the vision to really guide the map of where we’re going. So I relate a lot to law firms, because I started a consulting firm, and I had the same pains. And even though EOS is designed for companies and companies that have 10 or more employees, usually 10 to 250 employees is a sweet spot, it doesn’t mean that the tools can’t be used to help you get there.
We’ll talk Jay, why don’t you jump in? Because you had a question about this?
Yeah, I mean, and that’s the thing. You know, a lot of the people in our audience may be that solo person with a one assistant or maybe you know, a virtual assistant and-
Or they may have four people, but it’s, they don’t think of it as a larger team.
Yeah, they don’t think of it as a larger team. And, you know, they will be exposed to books like Traction, and, and they’ll say, I need to do this. But how can I do this? If my leadership team is my paralegal who sits at the next desk? We’re constantly talking. Why do we need to have a level 10 meeting? How can I, you know, bring people in? You know, it’s, because they see, you know, their, their vision is five years from now, I’m not going to be with just one person. But it’s hard to tell that one paralegal, listen, my vision is that we’re a firm of 15 people in 5 years, you know, because that paralegal is like, look, I just want my job, and that’s it. They’re not, they don’t have that sort of entrepreneurial culture. You know it’s that first person that you hire. So how do you translate this stuff? As somebody who’s done it themselves? To start with that, you know, you plus one person, to be able to scale like this?
Yeah, so, so, I think there’s one concept, which is the accountability chart, right. It’s one of my favorite tools in EOS. And when you start with the accountability chart, and you start mapping out, not an org chart, but who holds who accountable for what, and who has final decision making on what. That tool can be used at any level, right. And that’s what I used when, when I was just me and my assistant, I mapped out that but the most important piece of that tool that EOS and Traction brought to light was the figure of the integrator and the visionary. Right, I think it’s the first time that I see a book separate the CEO role into two separate distinct roles, right, because the CEO is supposed to be in charge of finances, and in charge of execution, in charge of the vision, in charge of the strategy in charge of the relationships, in charge of the sales. So like when you really think about CEO, and that’s why I hate titles, if we, if we mess that out. And I think the biggest issue that a lot of our professional services firms have is that a visionary is typically the person who lives in the future, who’s all gut driven, who’s about the growth, about the relationship, about making sure that people feel, you know, good about themselves, and they’re usually great at sales. But the integrator is more of the figure of the crossing the t’s, dotting the i’s making sure that the projects are on time, maintaining the focus in the now right, so the visionary is future, integrator is now, visionary is guts, integrator is mind, right? The visionary is all about the vision, where we’re going, the future, and the integrator is about the today, what do we need to focus on? And what do we need to restrict. So having that balance between two people creates a superpower for the company, because the biggest issue that we have as a professional services firm is that this is all happening in our head, and we’re the same person. So it creates a bipolar disorder. And sorry, if that’s not PC, but it creates a bipolar disorder for the company. Where at one minute, I’m reading a book, and I’m saying we need to do this. And then the next day I forget, and I start doing another thing. And then the other person next to me is like, this guy’s crazy, like, what is he talking about?
You’re basically talking about me.
Exactly, exactly.
My life. And that Jay, I would say, you know, from the beginning, when Price Benowitz first got into this, and eventually BluShark, thanks to Cesar, that we, that we, the org chart itself, was so powerful, because even if it’s you and four people, and you realize there’s, you want seven direct reports, you just happen to be sitting in five of the seats, and gives you that vision, assuming you want to scale, not make you evalueate if you should, but if you do want to grow, that that’s, that these are the places that if you actually want to get somewhere, you got to get yourself out of those seats at some point. And I went there just on a personal level, you know, my, my, I guess integrator at the law firm, for lack of better word, she came to me the other day, I’m overwhelmed. So I’m like, let me see your org chart. Like what was, it had grown from the six people she started with to 10. And I’m like, okay, it’s very, we can see, too many direct reports. And we’re like, okay, if we want to be at seven, which is the over under according to the experts, how, what do we do to get you there so that you’re not underwater? And literally, that was, you know, two years ago, this couldn’t have happened. But it’s now almost automatic, overwhelmed, what’s what’s causing it? And what can we do? Who can report to whom, what can you do to set that up? That’s sort of might take away and I think the power of, had I used this earlier, I was not, you know, disciplined enough, but that, that it would have given me the opportunity to see, this is where I want to be more finitely, it happened. We got there anyway, it just would have been with more purpose and direction.
Yeah. And a lot of times we get stuck because we say we can’t afford an integrator. And that’s the biggest thing, right? And in my case, and that’s one of the biggest myths that we have, because the reality is an integrator is anybody who’s better at follow through then you. That’s your integrator.
I like that. That’s pretty much everybody in my life.
Right, so in my case, it was our office manager. And you know, what, the integrator is a person that people come to, with all the complaints. It’s a, it’s a person who people complain about you to. It’s a person who can tell you no, right, and that’s usually your assistant, your paralegal. It’s a person who’s your office manager, and you know who that is. And that person is usually better at that than you anyway. So-
Well let me ask you something, cause, I’ll challenge you on something there, which is, if it’s a more junior person, and the person may or may not be with you for the long term, part of what was so daunting was you looked at successful companies, and they had an executive team together for such a long time. And that’s why I think there’s so much pressure on who you choose in that role.
It’s true. But when you’re starting off, and you have, you have less than five or your’re at 10 people, or you’re at 15 people, it’s who do you have? Like, it’s better to get someone you have right now then go out there and find this, you know, because a lot of times we think it’s like, well, it has to be a COO or a PLA, or somebody who’s, who’s an expert in what they do. And in reality, you just having someone with a function that’s better at this than you can create that thing. Now, I’m not telling you that the integrator, long term will be the right solution, but it’s the right solution for that time. And then little by little, each person will grab their seat and will, the the executive team, as you call it, or the leadership team will form. Right, qnd with time, but it’s not something I guess I’m answering Jay’s question on what of your law firm is less than five right? Now, if your law firm can afford a pro, you know, a professional legal administrator, or an office manager or somebody-
Which, every law firm should br moving to regardless of this program, right, that’s, exactly that’s the seminal hire that gets you anywhere, EOS or not.
100%, because it’s a person that typically makes sure that all of the processes are followed, everybody’s following the billing process, everybody’s doing all the things that they’re supposed to be doing. Because that’s not our superpower, typically, as a lead attorney, as an owner, as a founder of a law firm, or a services firm. So 100%. So the more you can delegate those things that drain your energy, the better you are in doing your superpowers, and that’s the whole premise of the integrator/visionary is, hey, there’s 20% of people out there that are that are capable of possibly doing both. But the reality is that you can’t do both at the same time, you have to choose, you have to do one or the other. Because if not, you’re wasting your superpowers on the, on the other.
That’s really, that’s really interesting to me. You know, one of the, one of the challenges I suspect you see, as you get involved with firms is you will have buy in from the CEO, or the owner of the operation, what whoever, whether it’s one or two or three partners, how do you deal with an ingrained culture where, you know, people can just walk into the CEOs office and ask questions about any topic, and, and there, and the ownership is on board with instilling a system like EOS. But the staff are saying, I’ve been, I’ve been with you for 20 years, if I got to ask you a question, I’m just gonna ask you the question. And you have to say, well, no, this person is in charge of that now go to them, they come to me, if they can’t solve it, but you have legacy employees, that you, they do their job well, but they are not. They are not as bought into the concept of EOS as the leadership is, how do you coach people to deal with that?
Well, there’s, there’s always going to be shift and change. Right. And it’s change management. And I, I feel, you know, change is always hard. But the important thing is why? Why do we need change? And I think that’s one of the key elements, when you’re, when we’re going through the process of implementing EOS, you know, first you start at leadership, but then there’s a whole rigorous process on how to roll it out to the rest of the team. Right? And it has to be slowly and understanding on and creating buy in at every level, because the reality is this, nobody wants to change, right? What, why change something that I don’t want to change. But if it’s going to change, and the purpose of the change is beneficial for us all, it’s beneficial for the firm, it’s beneficial for everybody to really, you know, believe and have their superpowers at heart for the company, then the purpose is there, right? So that’s why if at all, you read this book, and you want to implement you never implement this at the whole firm level at once. You want to go level by level, and it’s a change management. We’re adults, we like adult learning, space learning, we learn by mistakes. So we do it one level at a time. We start with the leadership, then once the leadership masters it and they’re ready, they move it down, right, so BluShark, they’re one of the star examples of this. They’re like we’re ready from the start. I’m like, wait, we need to practice first and then we’ll move, and they’re one of the fastest companies I’ve seen implement because they’re so you know, the people are so reliable and credible and really responsible. So they’re really, to, make it fast. Now, there’s people that take a whole year to get comfortable just at the leadership team level. And once they get comfortable and master the concepts, then they move it down. Right, you can’t move it down. And you can’t expect people to buy in if you don’t buy in as a leader.
Sure.
So we need the whole leadership to buy in, and then to see it, and then they can bring it down one level. And then after a quarter to bring it down one level,
Right, this was a piece that again, it was much clearer with BluShark because it was eager beavers, and everybody bought in from the top down very quickly, law firm, you know, it was in looking at it from a law firm perspective, much, much harder, right? God forbid, you get just your leadership team on this, you think you’ve, victory lap time, I’ve done it. Whereas in theory, you know, each division should be doing it. And I look at the present company included, were pretty sophisticated on the leadership team, but our bringing it down, you know, other than like asking people, what was your biggest personal/professional success, the rest of it’s a shit show. And like, you’re, you know, you’re trying to like, yes, it’s a meet, so the good thing is, it’s a meeting, it’s happening, you’re creating rocks, and it will, it will happen. But it starts off with just this pretense. And it’s sort of like with a law firm, you put so much emphasis into just the leadership team. And for many people, they don’t need to go much beyond it. But the real power is when you see it going all the way down. So BluShark, the links team, the content team, the sales team, each of these groups technically have their own group with their own rocks. And some of these things become company rocks are elevated up, it’s, it’s pretty cool to see. But it, you know, from the law firm point of view, it’s like you just feel like you’ve you’ve hit a grand slam, if you just get the management team on board, forget about bringing it down to different departments.
For us, I can speak to our firm, when we started to implement it, leadership was on board pretty quickly got into a rhythm and that type of thing. And we tried to bring it into lower levels, and there was some pushback. And it wasn’t until I sort of had an annual meeting after nine months of fits and starts at the lower level. And I said, okay, my vision is for me to be able to exit and you guys to still be employed. And so showing a profitable firm, that runs EOS is going to make us attractive to somebody who wants to either aquire us and keep you guys employed, or we bring in, you guys decide to bring in somebody to be the new CEO, and you guys buy me out or something like that. And then finally, it started to click that, okay, this is, this is how we make ourselves basically future proof and keep our positions because you know, when you have someone who’s 45, they don’t want to necessarily go out and look for a new job, they’re happy to run out the clock, and they’re doing well. They’re making good money. So it really was our convincing them of my vision, matching their vision for security was really how we were able to take this to the next level. And now people are starting to embrace the EOS principles in our office, which I really like. Because then there’s or, you know, functional groups that are that are, I’m hearing are doing things, and we’re seeing the success, but we’re not, I’m not involved in that day to day, where I was for years, you know, how many rings are you picking up the phone? I was involved in that, I’m not involved in that anymore. And thank God I’m not because it was extremely draining to be involved in that level of minutiae, across everything in a firm.
There’s, there’s a point you bring up and something I talk to every leadership team, when, when we start is that, you know, when we start this process of implementing EOS, I usually see 20% of your staff will, will shift within the first year, right [inaudible] because the reality is this, the reality is we all have staff members that love, love to live in the mess. We love people that like to hide behind things that nobody knows how to do. We have people who, and that’s people that love that type of environment. And EOS is an environment of transparency and accountability. So if you have any of those employees that goes like so, what do you do? Oh, too much. I have I got so much going on. Nobody knows what I do, I understand but just can you put it down in writing? No, nobody can do what I do. And it’s like, I’m so critical for this company and everything is in my head I’m like, I understand what can you put it down in a piece of paper and they can’t tell you exactly what they do. It’s, there’s a reason for that. But a lot of people like hiding behind the mess. So when you start implementing these things and these concepts and transparency, clarity, accountability starts filtering through, then it creates it creates a void for people who like living in the mass and say wait, where do I hide now my numbers are up in the, are up in the board, there’s things that are happening that people know, now I can’t hide behind other people or their or their excuses. So now that’s when some people feel irky, and and then those are the people that typically shift right so, so when we when we start and that’s part of the change, right? What got you here doesn’t get you there. Right. So, so Sometimes we need certain type of people when we’re starting, we need a person that’s agile and multiple hats. But then we need to go from a jazz band to a marching band at one point, and jazz bands work really well, sometimes. But if you want to scale, you need to be a marching band.
I like that. I like that. That’s a really good analogy.
Let me ask you, I want to go down a path because Jay sort of alluded to this before, you know, let’s, let’s go back, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you from my own perspective, right, I started off here. And when I looked at the pricing of EOS, generally, it’s not nothing, right? It’s 3500 to 7500 per visit, five a year on average. And I thought, okay, I’m going to do this myself. And I actually approached him, because it sounds like what you may have ended up having to figure out for Latin America, which is, you know, I tried, I failed, I had the wrong integrator. For a bunch of reasons. This didn’t work well. But what are the steps that somebody could take? You know, short of bringing in the expert, and to me, I feel like it, there should be some almost self service way of doing, as God, you know, if people get it great. But how many of those people are going to break and come running to Caesar or one of your compatriots in the US coaching world and say, I’m ready? So are there steps that are not, that pass the laugh test that you’ve seen people? Because I’ve seen a few motivated people run EOS themselves.
Yeah.
What can you do to do that yourself?
Yeah, the EOS stat is, right now there’s over 80,000 companies running EOS only, only 10,000 of those are with an implementer so, so there’s usually an eight to one ratio. EOS has a great platform online called EOS worldwide. And for 500 bucks a month, you see all the same videos that we get trained on as implementers. So there’s a do it yourself kind of thing that you could do, where you can go to eosworldwide.com, go to basecamp, sign up for basecamp. And then you can see all the materials, if you already have someone in your firm that can watch these videos and implement them in your firm, this is a this is I think, a no brainer, it’s a way for them to get the concepts and implement that way. That’s, that’s the first option. The second option is looking for newer implementers. So as you know, implementers, we all do exactly the same thing, we all follow the same exact process, we all follow the same formula, we don’t deviate from the product, because it’s so simple that it makes it, the framework works. So we try to not deviate from it. And as EOS implementers. We, we we strive to be as pure as possible is what we say, the pure, the EOS purity. So the reality is that you know, newer implementers have less experience. So EOS, you know, you can go from $15,000 a year to around $50 to $55,000 a year is usually the gambit between EOS implementers. Now, in our minds, a lot of times when the pricing comes up is well, it’s you’re charging me $5000 for one day, right, but it’s not really the day it’s a full quarter because you got the implementer, you got the resources, you got the different things that you’re, you’re managing and they’re coaching your integrator to become a better Integrator as well. But yeah, the payment cycle is usually by day, and you’ll get people from 3000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 10,000, 12,000. Right? So there’s people that are newer that are that are that are more affordable, and they can, they can do it. Now. It’s based on experience. That doesn’t mean, it’s based on their experience on implementing for EOS, right. So I have people in my team who are at the $3,000 mark a day and they come from 20 years of VP experience in HR for Mandarin Oriental, or, you know, private equity, sold twice to private equity. And now they’re doing this a, as, as their, you know, as they are giving back to a company. So there’s different levels of implementers out there. It’s, it’s a base of what we’re doing right. So. So those are two ways that you could do it. And then most of the free, and that’s one of the, most of the tools EOS has, they’re all free online. That’s one of the things I love about Gino and EOS is that it’s an abundance mindset. So everything is out there. You can watch videos, you can look at the tools, you can do these things. So I would say accountability chart, level 10 meeting, scorecard, and the vision, the vision traction organizer, those four tools can get you 60% of the way if you do them well. Where I see the fallback is when when you’re trying to preach to your own choir, that’s where I see the fallback, right because I started, I tried to do that for my own team, but they’re like Cesar, I try to facilitate, I try to teach, and I try to participate at the same time. So my voice was too loud for my team. All right, so you can get a friend to do it. You can get somebody else, another attorney to come and do it for your, your law firm. You do it for their law firm, but just having somebody from outside,
It’s just like the messuses trade off hours like you gotta find, you go run somebody else’s EOS.
Exactly go rob somebody else.
Seth, I do not want a massage from you. I will tell you that right now. I want everybody to hear this all over the world. Seth Price is not giving me a massage. I don’t care what you offer me.
See, Jay is much less frugal. I will probably take a massage from just about anybody if I’m facedown on the table. I’ll tell you how frugal I am. I actually was, was threw up my hands that I couldn’t do it myself and said, hey, EOS has a worldwide directory. So I found the guy in the Philippines figuring there would be Philippines rates. No, no, no, not today. It’s US rates all over. So it was like, I thought that was gonna be my backdoor I was gonna do virtually from the Philippines, did not work. So Jay had a final question for you before we wrap up.
Yeah. So, so Cesar, you know, you’ve been lucky, you have looked into not only law firms, but other entrepreneurial endeavors. And the question, I really have for you is something that I’ve never really heard an answer to. So I’m gonna put you on the spot. How big are the best leadership teams? I mean, you know, is there is there ones, you know, is three too small? Is nine too big? I mean, you know, we’re talking about companies in the 15 to 250 thing, I think most law firms probably are in the, you know, 20 to 60 people range, maybe 20 to 100. How big should a leadership team be and when is it too small? When do you need to add people? And when do you need to say this leadership team has gotten too big? Do you have any guidance for our people in that?
You’re gonna hate my answer because it depends, right?
Oh!
You’ll probably get along with this guy!
No, no, no wait, wait. But I’ll double click, I’ll double click, I promise I’ll double click. So it look, it’s what people like people ask me, it’s like, why should I implement EOS? I’m like, it depends. What are you looking for? Right? So, so EOS is a system that helps you focus on what you want. I wanted time. The only reason I wanted to implement EOS because I was drowning in time, I had no time for myself, I just wanted time back. That’s what I wanted. And that’s what EOS gave me because I focused on me getting time. If people want to scale, then I focus EOS on scale. All right? If I want profitability, focus us on profitability. Whatever you put your focus on, which EOS is a focus tool, it helps you focus on what you want to focus on. Right. So I’m premising that because I’m going to double click right. So the same happens with your leadership team. It depends on how much time do you want to work? How many seats in the leadership team do you want to have as the owner, right? Because a lot of owners make the best sales leader, a lot of owners make the best finance leader, a lot of a lot of owners. Now it all depends on what’s the amount of time you want to be in your company. And when you look at your leadership team, a leadership team has traditionally five people, traditionally, right? You could go between five and eight, right? It’s the Jeff Bezos rule, the two pizzas, right? You have leadership teams of three that are very functional and that are great at what they do. And they have great mid managers that help them up high, then you have leadership teams of five that you know, so it all depends on how much, how many seats you want to take. When I started, I was all five seats. Right? When I ended, I was one seat, right when I sold. So during the middle, I was probably two or three seats. And then it all depends on how many seats you want. And how many of those seats do you want to take for yourself? I don’t know. I don’t know if that helps you?
I mean, honestly, that’s a really great answer. Because I think people need to actually go into it consciously. And recognize that you may start with a three person leadership team. But the way to get you to what your goal is, is to add that fourth or fifth member, and you need to, you need to be consciously going with your vision as the entrepreneur who is doing it but Cesar that I mean, that did it for me. Thank you so much for being with us here on The Law Firm Blueprint. This has been a really, a really eye opening session for me, I you know, I’ve read the book, we practice it in our office, I think it’s something that anybody who was thinking about growing or scaling their firm should really, should really go, go into and, you know, go on vacation and read the books and and do your research, because this is a way to really sort of give you back, I’ve talked to, I know personally, I’ve talked to plenty of law firm owners who are like, yeah, the money is great now, but now I have no time for anything and I hate my life. And that’s not the end of scale that you want, right? You don’t want to be more miserable than when you started scaling. So and that comes down to what your vision is and how you’re going to implement it. And I think someone like you, is, is, is helpful to be able to have somebody who has seen it across the board and say, hey, what about this? What can we do to make sure that I’m holding you accountable to what you truly said that you wanted? So thank you for being with us today.
No, my pleasure, thank you for having me.
Seth, anything further? I mean, this was, this was was a great session. I’ve already I’ve already got in my head, I gotta reach out to Cesar, I gotta do some offline questions to him about a few things. So-
And look, we didn’t even get to the fact that he’s taking over, over the world, or at least, the southern hemisphere with, because to me, they’re, they’re as great as EOS is, and I love it for us. And I love the fact that I have the resources to pay for it, I know that this stuff is needed. And that, that the, that whoever cracks the code, I wanted somebody to crack the code quickly enough for me to get it here. But whoever cracks the code on how to scale this, without that, you know, five figure plus nut, I think he’s gonna is going to really impact the world, business world in a positive way.
Yeah, I agree. And I would-
We’ll have you back to talk about that next time Cesar.
I was gonna say, I say about 18 months, we’re gonna have Cesar back and we’re gonna be talking about the great successes he’s had in Latin America and how it’s really being able to scale to unbelievable, unbelievable heights. So I’m excited about that. All right, folks, that’s gonna do it this week on The Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go by subscribing to The Law Firm Blueprint podcast, be sure to give us five stars, when you do download the latest episode. Of course, you can catch us live every week. 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific live on LinkedIn as well as in our Facebook group. If you haven’t joined yet, please do. It’s called the Law Firm Blueprint. That’s going to do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane, he’s Seth Price. Cesar Quintero was our guest today. Thank you all for being with us and bye for now.
Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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