S6:E7: The Law Firm Growth Summit with Moshe Amsel

Jay Ruane 0:07

Hello, hello, and welcome to this edition, a special edition of The Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane and with me, is not Seth Price. It’s my man, Moshe. Moshe is here to talk about something that I think everybody should be participating in. And we’re going to talk about the Law Firm Growth Summit so Moshe, thanks so much for being with us today. And I first got to ask you, why are you doing this? It’s a lot of work to put on something like this for everybody. I mean, there’s so much to talk about today. But what, what inspired you to put on something like this?

Moshe Amsel 0:41

You know, it is a heck of a lot of work. And somebody was telling me the other day, they were like, I hope you’re making a ton of money off of this. And the reality is, is that it is not a profit center for us. Actually, this year, I think it’s gonna be the first time we actually eke out a profit from the event. But that is not the intention. And the actually registration for it is free. So if you’re wondering about my business model, it sucks, right. But actually, I started with law firm owners and the end of 2018. So I was building an accounting practice trying to figure out how to separate myself from everybody else. And I picked up a book by Mike Michalowicz wits called Profit First. And read that book, got really excited about it, found out that he had a Profit First Professionals organization where he certified accountants and bookkeepers to basically go into businesses and implement Profit First. So I became a Profit First Professional. And through their headquarters was introduced to a law firm in Manhattan, who became my client, they really liked what I was doing. They introduced me to another, introduced me to another, before I knew it I had five law firms as clients. One of them went from 80,000 to a million in a year, everybody wishes they had her problem.

Jay Ruane 1:55

Wow!

Moshe Amsel 1:55

The other four, basically, were transferring personal funds every two weeks to cover payroll, and then trying to pay themselves but then transferring it back to cover rent. And that was the money game, they were playing. And they were all doing the same thing. But they looked really good on the outside, like from the outside, you would never know. They had multiple attorneys on staff. They had support staff, they had clients they were working on. So something was broken. And that’s really how I got started with the law firm industry. So in 2019, I started my podcast Profit with Law and decided this is it, I’m putting my stake in the ground, and I’m going to be going after the legal niche. Through the podcast, I met a bunch of really amazing people, people who had a message to share. And when I started to look at where are lawyers getting their education, I found out that basically they go to conferences, and conferences are 90%, about becoming a better lawyer. And then they throw into a session here and they throw in a session there related to building your business, increasing your customers and increasing your, your practice area, whatever it is. And I said that’s not going to fly. Like we all know that lawyers went to law school, not business school, they don’t teach business in law school. And it shouldn’t be so difficult. There shouldn’t be so many lawyers that are struggling. And actually I went out to, we were talking about steak dinner, I went out with Allison Williams from Law Firm Mentor to steak at one of my favorite steak places in Jersey, and the Capital Grill, and we went out for lunch. I don’t think she ordered steak, I think she got fish and I ordered steak. I love steak, I’ll get steak any ti- I’ll get it for breakfast. But we had a great conversation. I basically floated this spire and I said like, what if we created a conference that was just exclusively on the business of running a law practice, rather than all this other stuff? Like, let’s just take all the legal stuff out of it go to the conferences for those. But what if we create one that’s just for that? And we bounced around this idea of like, okay, who would who would talk and we talked about having an in person event with maybe four speakers. And when I went home, I was really thinking about it. And I said, you know, limiting the exposure of the people who come to the event to only four, or five, six people is going to severely limit the expertise that they have access to. Not only that, but so many law firm owners are struggling financially. Now we’re gonna ask them to get on a plane, skip three days of work, plus two days of travel, I mean, a week of work basically to come to my event, it started to not make any sense. And I said, that’s not what I want to create what I want to create as an environment where everybody can come and get the best of the best, basically in 45 minutes of every single expert’s time and really glean from that how they can make their law firm better. So The Law Firm Growth Summit idea was born, we’ll run it virtually, and invite as many of the experts out there as are willing to come. And each of us is going to promote it to try to just make sure that everybody knows about it. And we just filled the room. And it’s free.

Jay Ruane 5:15

I mean, it’s-

Moshe Amsel 5:16

Is really how it started.

Jay Ruane 5:18

It’s really, it’s really amazing. And one of the reasons why I love it, and I’ve been an attendee before I was a speaker, but I’m happy to be able to present this year, is that the knowledge of the business of law is, is oftentimes gate kept away from the small law firm, you know, the business of law for big law, you know, they have conferences, you know, when you have a law firm with 1000 lawyers, they’ve got people who are paying attention to all these things, but there really, you know, up until the last couple of years hasn’t been a community of small firm legal entrepreneurs, and you’ve tapped into something that I think is really special, in that you can get this sort of great knowledge. And you don’t have to leave your desk, you can be home at dinner, you know, that night, and but you can still get some quality, quality stuff. And for me, I used to be a conference junkie and go to all of them. And we would talk about business, you know, in the, in the happy hours afterwards, outside in the in the in the waiting rooms, that type of thing. So the fact that we can do it now remotely, I think is, this is probably one of the best uses of this remote technology that is out there. It’s better for me than remote court dates. It’s better for me than pretty much anything else remote as being able to participate in something like this. And being an attendee, I mean, I went through the list of all the speakers and everything and I’ve got so many of them on my agenda, to make sure that I’m in the room to watch their presentations. I’m really excited. But you’ve got a couple of keynotes. I know Allison’s doing a keynote, right. And, and I think Brett Trembly is, so tell me about your keynotes so people can understand what’s in store for them if they do sign up for their free ticket.

Moshe Amsel 7:04

Yeah, so I do a mixture of bringing in keynotes that are within the legal space as well as keynotes that are maybe not, nobody people don’t know as much about, but really have a message to share. And I had Mike Michalowicz at the last two events. So we’re, this is the fourth time we’re running it. And I love him. And I would, I would have totally had him back for another one. But I was afraid that, that it’s gonna, it needs a refresh. So I’ll bring him back next year. So for those of you who are like, oh, I wanted Mike Michalowicz, we’ll bring him back. Okay. Because I am in his organization, I get access to him for a reduced rate that makes it affordable for me, it’s actually really expensive to get these keynote speakers on stage. Because they’re charging a speaker fee. But our keynote speaker lineup this year, I’m really excited about Allison Williams, because A) you already heard she’s part of the origin story of the Law Firm Growth Summit. B) she was involved since the first one. C) I already invited her last year and she wasn’t, she had a conflict and couldn’t make it. So we finally were able to pin it down. And her organizational law firm mentor decided to to become a sponsor of the event as well, and really tap into the fact that she’s on that keynote stage. So we have a great lineup of sponsors, 12, sponsors, six gold, six silver, you can see them on our lawfirmgrowthsummit.com landing page, and you’ll hear about them at the event, they all will have virtual booths for you to visit. And we hope that that you that you pay them some, some attention, because that’s how we’re able to create this event for free is two pieces. And that’s one of them the sponsorship and the other is VIP ticket, which I’ll mention at some point. So also Allison Williams I’m really excited for her talk, she’s going to be talking and I’m just going to pull up the agenda. So I don’t screw up the topic name. But she’s going to be talking on profiting through people and process, a self managing law firm. And I’m really excited about her talk. Because there’s so much that needs to be learned on how easy it is to implement systems and processes. And, in order to basically make your firm run on its own. Now, nothing completely runs on its own and nobody’s going to say that. But most people when they start to realize that I need to delegate and start bringing on staff, they hold the, they hold the responsibility and they only delegate the tasks and what profiting through people and process basically is going to teach you, her keynote, she’s gonna. what she’s going to lay out for you is how to delegate responsibility, how to finally get it off of your plate by having everything so clear, and so, and so precise that it’s easy for your managers to be able to manage your business for you. And you don’t have to be the one holding the bag and holding that responsibility. We then have Brett Trembly, who has also been a longtime supporter of The Law Firm Growth Summit. And he has, he’s built a really nice sized law firm. But at the same time, he had a challenge at some point where he just couldn’t find good staffers locally for the right price for what he needed to support his law firm growth. And he started to look overseas, started to look in Central America and, and Latin American countries. And he found that he could get some really talented individuals who a lot of them even hold degrees for really, really an inexpensive price. But more importantly, it widened the talent pool significantly. And he started, this business Get Staffed Up off the backs of using this for his law firm. And I’m a big fan of Get Staffed Up. We’ve been using their services for years. And I think that every law firm owner needs to understand what their options are when it comes to virtual staffing. As a matter of fact, I think that every law firm owner, when they start their firm, should be hiring a VA before they even opened their doors. Because there’s so many tasks that you end up doing that are not worth your time, they’re holding you back from your growth. And if you simply had a $6 an hour person or a $10 an hour person in that seat before you started, you would have grown exponentially faster. So really excited about Brett who’s going to talk about overcoming fear. He’s going to talk about overcoming your fear of failure, and how to just keep pushing on, like how did he do it? How did he build two businesses? One of, one, at least one of which is in the Inc 5000. And and really excited to have him on stage to talk about that. The next keynote is Sean Callagy. Sean Callagy, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he is an attorney. He owns a law firm, Callagy Law. And he basically built his I mean, he started his firm with $100,000 in credit card debt. And basically created this this unique system in the medical field to collect on medical bills or something that he’s doing. I’m not even sure what the what the firm does. It’s a combination of med mal and, and, and medical billing. But he’s grown a multimillion dollar law firm, hundreds of people on staff. And he found out that he was going to become blind, he has some sort of genetic pigmentation and started to lose his vision. And he dove into the fact that he was losing his vision and didn’t want that to stop him and decided to go out and become a public speaker, a public figures started a brand called Unblinded. And he does all kinds of crazy things. Like he teaches people how to surf. And he’s surfing blind. I mean, it’s just-

Jay Ruane 13:00

Wow

Moshe Amsel 13:00

Crazy what he’s doing. But he’s been on Tony Robbins’ istage. And I was, I got to see him on stage in person. And I said, he’s just one of those people that is just so charismatic and just has the right words, the right language, makes you feel so good, and really inspires you. And I said, I gotta get Sean on my stage. So I was able to work out with his team to have him keynote for us. And he’s actually going to do a follow up panel the next day. So he’s keynoting on day one. And then he’s doing like a shorter segment on day two, to kind of bring everything that he did on day one home. So I’m really excited about that opportunity as well. And then the last one that I invited, her name is Megan Reilly, nothing to do with the legal industry. She was on Shark Tank, she has a business called Tippi Toes, which is a kids dance ballerina class or whatever. She went on Shark Tank to get investment in expanding her business into multiple locations, they got a deal. And subsequent to the show airing, when they got the fine print of the deal, decided to actually reject it, went on to create a franchise with 30 locations. And she’s just a powerhouse of a woman. And she’s going to be talking about how to be successful at anything. And that’s on day three at 10:30am. So really excited about the keynote, keynote lineup. I think this is the best keynote lineup so far. This is our fourth event, and we’re getting better and better at bringing the right people to you.

Jay Ruane 14:32

Yeah, it really sounds great. And I think, I think one of the great things about the schedule that you have set forth is that it really can apply to law firm owners at varying levels of their own success, right. So if you are somebody who’s literally about to hang a shingle or in the first six months and dealing with all that stuff, you have speakers, and you have topics that would appeal to them, but then they can also see the stuff that may not have applied to them right now, but may in six months or a year. And I think that’s one of the really cool things about your event. It’s not limited to, you know, people at a certain point in time, because you can kind of go up and down and find things that really work for your, your current needs, and put stuff on your radar for the future.

Moshe Amsel 15:24

Yeah, you know, you’re, you’re 100%, right. And what we did, and this, we did this already, for the last event, we realize or recognize that there’s different types of people come in the room. And we wanted to expand the event to cater more, not not away from the startups. But we were attracting a lot of people who are just brand new, just starting their firm. And a lot of people who have gotten some traction were like, oh, this is not for me. So what we did was as last time already, we, we tracked it in three categories. And we did that again, this year, we have the startup track, which is your zero to 250k, that’s basically from when you start until you’re maxed out solo, now you may be maxed out solo at 350k, whatever it is, but that’s the startup phase. Once you max out as a solo, you’re then hiring staff, you have new challenges, you have new problems, you have to create marketing, that’s going to be a little bit more on autopilot, that’s going to be more predictable. So you weren’t, what you need as a business owner changes. So we created a track called the expansion track. And that’s for that 250k, 350k to 2 million range. Now 2 million is a rough, right, like some people, it’s a million some people, it’s one and a half, basically, where you’ve gotten remember, I said that some people like delegate tasks, they don’t delegate responsibility, you overcome that, you start to delegate responsibility when you’re at that one and a half to $2 million dollar mark, because that’s when you finally have enough in there to have a right, the right management layer in place that you can actually delegate everything off of your plate for. So that’s the expansion track. And then from there, we have the legacy creator track, which is the topics that somebody who’s already gotten to 2 million and is trying to get to 10, for example, or 20, they have different challenges. It’s not so much about the growth of the business as it is about why am I doing this? And what is what is the purpose of my firm, and what is the purpose of my life. And so we have talks like Brooke Lively, who has just released a book called Exit on Top, where she’s doing a session on basically running your firm, like it’s for sale, and being able to maximize the value of the firm. From the perspective of selling it, that’s not something that somebody who’s at 250k is really going to care about. But it, it makes a lot of sense for those legacy creators. And I’m just gonna, I’m gonna share my screen for a second. And just, let me just see if I get this working. Okay, so we have it on on our lawfirmgrowthsummit.com page, we have the agenda laid out so you can easily see where everything is. But we also have it broken down, here’s our keynote sessions, our mainstage sessions, and then our sessions broken up by category. So here’s the startup ones, then the expansion, and then the legacy creator. And then we also added bonus sessions, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But if you want to be able to see what’s in your category you can get, you can see it right there on lawfirmgrowthsummit.com. Now, this year, the event platform we’re using is Zoom Events. So one thing that’s really cool is in Zoom Events, if you go into the session section, there’s a filter. And you can actually choose like, okay, I’m expansion, I’m just going to click on expansion. And now I’m only seeing the expansion sessions.

Jay Ruane 18:34

Oh, that’s so cool.

Moshe Amsel 18:35

And I can bookmark what I want to, what I want to go to. And, and then once I bookmark it, I’m like, let’s say, I see, I want to go to this, I want to go to this, I want to go to this, then I’ve got my itinerary and everything is marked out, I just, you know, these are the ones I just bookmarked, and everything’s marked out that I want to go to those sessions. So really cool stuff that we’re doing with the platform that we’re that we’re, you know, that we’re using to run the event, but also in, in basically breaking it out for you into these into these sections so that it makes sense for you. You can, you can see what is the right topics that I should go to based on where I’m at.

Jay Ruane 19:13

I love it. I love it. I’m really, like I said, I’m really excited about this. I mean, I know a lot of the speakers, there’s a lot of new ones that I don’t know, personally, and I’m excited about some of the topics that are coming in, because you know, I’m at that, you know, I guess legacy creator point in my practice, but every time I attend something like this, I find things that I can implement and I can change. And that’s one of the things that I think, a big takeaway from anybody is that don’t you know, don’t have cement feet, right? If you’re constantly changing and making things better, it makes you more nimble and allows you to pivot when a time to pivot happens. And you can have all of this knowledge at your fingertips. So I think it’s going to be a great event and I’m really excited about it.

Moshe Amsel 20:00

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it’s really important for you to operate from the place of where you want to be. And this is what I do with my coaching clients is basically create the vision of where you want to be 12 months from now, and then let’s make some decisions based on that. So when you attend this event, attend it from the place of where you want to be, not where you are right now. So if you’re in the startup phase, but you want to be in the legacy creator phase, go to the legacy creator sessions, that’s how you’re gonna get there, when you start to see the thing- the decisions that legacy creators are making. That’s, that’s where you want to be.

Jay Ruane 20:36

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest challenges for anybody is it like, I’ve never had a firm that is as big and as, you know, you know, not even getting to the finances of it, but in staffing wise, in volume of cases, and all of those things. And also, in gross and net revenue. I’ve never dealt with that before, you know, as of today, and tomorrow will be even bigger to some extent, and the day after. And so I’m constantly, you know, knocking on new doors. And so it helps me to see what other people are doing, or at least the questions that they’re asking, and the resources that they’re tapping. And I think that anybody along this path can start and see their way through. And I think it’s a fantastic, fantastic summit. So what are the dates again? And where do people go to sign up for their free ticket?

Moshe Amsel 21:26

Absolutely. So I’m just gonna go back to this is our landing page, basically, lawfirmgrowthsummit.com, lawfirmgrowthsummit.com. And you can see here, it says 40 plus experts, but when I counted last, we actually have a total of 50 speakers. So 50 speakers at this event, there’s, here’s the reasons you should go. But then we we highlight all the speakers, you can see them all listed here, and you’re gonna see faces you recognize, because there’s a lot of people in the legal space, and a lot of them have been here for a while. And they’re, I mean, I think that we have probably 70 or 80% of the people that you know, and you know, that are influencers in the legal space, May 21st to the 23rd are the dates, you can see the entire agenda right here on lawfirmgrowthsummit.com, you don’t have to register to see the agenda, you can see it here. And one thing you’re gonna see is that we have breakout sessions, the breakout sessions are those hands on workshops, that’s where the real work is done. And it might look a little overwhelming, because there’s so many, but when I showed you the platform, you were able to see that, for example, if, if I put on a filter for let’s say, the expansion stage, right, and I look, there’s only four in each time slot for the expansion sl-, st- expansion, expansion phase, excuse me. So you’re not choosing from 12, you’re choosing from 4. Now, if you’re saying well, still, there’s three or four I want to go to and they’re all happening at the same time, I want to just tell you that there is an option for a VIP ticket, which is this page here, which you’ll get after you register, you’ll be offered a VIP ticket. And what’s included in that is the recordings for all the sessions. So you literally are going to get I mean, we have over 60 sessions, at the upcoming summit, you’re gonna get the recordings of all those sessions included in that ticket, you’ll also get a swag box, which is really cool. And this is not exactly what’s in this year’s but the T-shirt’s included. This is actually our 2019 swag box, this picture, but we have actually a couple of books from some of our sponsors in there. So some really great books for growing your law firm are included. This mug that I’m drinking from, actually you don’t see my picture on there, do you?

Jay Ruane 23:43

Yeah we do!

Moshe Amsel 23:43

Back for a second, this mug, The Law Firm Growth Summit mug, along with my Profit With Law logo, but really great mug, I use it all the time here. And that is included in there as well. Along with some- I don’t want to spoil it all for you. But really cool swag box, they get it shipped out to you. Our first 50 swag boxes just went out over the weekend, we’ve been shipping about a dozen a day and sending those out. And then we also included some bonuses to really sweeten the deal for you so that you’re not just paying five bucks a session to get the recordings. But you’re getting these bonuses too. So you get a free strategy call with a Profit With Law Coach, and I’ll tell you a little secret, it’s going to be me. I’m not, I’m not putting this out to my coaches, I’m actually going to be doing these calls myself. Number two, I’m doing a training after the summit, its the week after, discovering three things that will allow you to triple your revenue and double your profit in 12 months. And then another training, Profit First training which some of you in this group have seen my training that I did with Jay. It’s the same training but basically I’m going to be doing that training again, live the week after the summit for people who purchased the VIP ticket. So you you can’t get to this directly. I mean, you could if you grab this URL from the screenshot, but register first with a free ticket, it’ll then offer you the paid ticket. And if you want the recordings, because you literally want to attend sessions that are happening at the same time, or you want the whole package, you want those bonuses, then just know that you’ll, you’ll make that purchase. And, and you’ll, and you’ll have it, even if you can’t attend any of the sessions, right, like, oh, my gosh, I’ve got, i’m in the middle of a trial, I’ve got, you know, appointments booked, we got you know, my calendars booked for next week, I hope it’s not because we’re going into Memorial Day. That’s why I chose those dates, and I was like people are already going to get ready for vacation. So let’s go and attend the conference. But the reality is, is that you may have conflicts, you may not be able to attend, we’ve got you covered, there’s a VIP ticket there available for you. Again, I’m not really making money off of this event, it just helps to defray the cost of putting this on, there’s a lot of expense in putting this event on, including my team, which is basically five people working full time for four or five months leading up to this, to put this on. And we do it for you. We do it so that you can experience the transformation. And it’s really from like, from the bottom of my heart. Like the reason that I’m out here every single day is to help everybody grow. As a matter of fact, my mission statement here at Profit With Law is to empower all people with wealth creation so that this and future generations can lead a better life. And I’ll take an extra few minutes, Jay, hopefully it’s okay. To just share like why, why is that my mission? Where does it come from? When my grandfather came from Nazi Germany when he was 11 years old with his father. Him with nothing, lost his mother, and his twin siblings in the Holocaust and basically started from scratch. And he, his father, my grandfather, was a business owner started a business, he started a basically a diamond merchant business here in New York. And my grandfather’s my, that was my great grandfather, my grandfather stepped into the business that his father had started, operating that business and got together with four of his cousins and bought a piece of real estate on the west side of Manhattan, an apartment building. And that apartment building increased in value over time, it was just a really good investment that they made. And they’d started turning it into co-ops, and he decided to take the money that was being, coming from selling all these individual units and to gift each of his 36 grandchildren with the downpayment of their first home purchase.

Jay Ruane 23:58

Wow.

Moshe Amsel 24:32

Myself included. I was the recipient of a gift at 20 years old that allowed me to be a homeowner at 21 when most people spend their 20s, and maybe even early 30s saving, to be able to make that first home purchase. Now, back when I purchased it, there was no 3%, down 97%, you know, borrowing you had to have 20% down, it was almost impossible to buy a house until you had $40-$50,000 in the bank. But I had it because of the work that he did to create a generational wealth that’s going to change the financial trajectory of all of his grandchildren. And when I sat and decided, what do I want to do that’s gonna be meaningful in my life, I decided that I wanted to go out and help people create wealth in that way, that they can do with it more than just living their best life. But also impacting future generations, whether it’s philanthropically, whether it’s your children and grandchildren, everybody’s situation is different. But imagine if you solved all your financial issues to the point where you actually created something that can leave a dynasty for you. That’s what I’m trying to help. And I just started with law firm owners, I just started with this industry. But I’ve got a much bigger mission that I’m after. And that’s why I created this event, I created this event, because I want to give everyone the tools that they need to succeed. This is just the beginning. Getting cash into your business and throwing cash off from your business is just the beginning. Now what do you do with it? You’re going to make smart decisions, you’re going to invest wisely. I can’t tell you how many lawyers I met that even after they’re successful, they’ve got a ton of cash in the bank, and they’re not doing anything with it. There’s so much opportunity even beyond success. This is just the beginning. And I hope that everyone can join us at The Law Firm Growth Summit, and really drink from from the fire hose, it’s going to be on the entire time, and have a completely changed rest of 2024 beginning of 2025.

Jay Ruane 29:43

Yeah, I really, I mean I am so impressed with the lineup that you’ve put together. I think everybody who’s in this group who’s hearing this message needs to sign up. You know, for me, I know there’s a bunch that I want to see and I’ve got some conflicts, so I’m, after we get off this call. I’m signing up as, as, for a VIP ticket, because I want to get those recordings myself. So I’m really looking forward to it, Moshe thank you so much for being with us today here on The Law Firm Blueprint and inviting us to be part of this wonderful thing that you’re doing. I couldn’t be more excited for it. So thank you so much, folks. That’s gonna do it today for this edition of The Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you could take us anywhere you want to go on the go by signing up for The Law Firm Blueprint podcast. And of course, you can catch us live in this, in the Facebook group 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific every Thursday, as well as on LinkedIn, and every other social platform that Seth puts us on, but that’s gonna do it for us. Bye for now.