Jay Ruane 0:07

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 in his home base today. Seth, how’s your week going? 

Seth Price 0:20

It’s going well, and we are, you know, live to tape here in the afternoon. I noticed Jay was slightly less energetic than we do in the morning ones. 

Jay Ruane 0:29

Oh, this is, this has been just a long day. I’ve done, like, just, it’s been a long day. 

Seth Price 0:38

So lots of good things here. You know, very often I’m now at the growing stage of a law firm where you’re trying to add in new elements. We gave away sweatshirts to new clients with our CO brand, with the commanders, and ended up getting some dissatisfying clients because they weren’t commanders fans, which, so, you know, so now, so now we’re like, Okay, do we do a survey before somebody, when somebody signs on as a client, do we crush you as a Giants fan that you’re now supporting for the next three years?

Seth Price 1:15

So like, what are we going to do? Right? And what’s interesting though, is we talk a lot about, you know, getting information upfront about clients. And it’s one of these things that I’m on a tear for, which is, we talk about it, but how much do you get and how well do you use it? Do you know somebody’s birthday? Obviously, get that when you sign up. But kids, you know, have other areas of interest. What is it so that when your people are speaking, they have something to fall back on that’s not just the facts of the case. Because in pi, for example, where there’s a lot of this, things go on for an extended period of time, and criminal you deal with, nobody wants to be dealing with what they’re dealing with, if you can somehow, you know, have some sort of hate the term small talk, but something that’s not just the facts of stuff that people don’t want to be dealing with, not the worst thing in the world. 

Jay Ruane 2:13

So one of the things that we do actually, you know, is dovetails. So we’ve got this AI agent that we’ve programmed to actually do biographical sketches of our clients. And so I went into a couple different tools, and I said I wanted you to know one of the questions I should have asked if I’m going to create a biography of a client. And one of the ones that I hadn’t thought of, but we added in, was, Do you own any pets? And that is important in a criminal context, because if someone’s single and has a dog or a cat, and they got to go in and do some time, they need to find somebody to care for that animal. So we want to know that. So we asked, Do you have any pets? What are their names? Do you, you know are, do you? Are you a fan of any local sports teams? You know, that type of thing. And we ask it in an innocuous way, because, you know, not for nothing. I’ve had prosecutors who are Die Hard, Red Sox fans, and I ain’t gonna tell them that my client is a Yankees fan. You know, that type of thing. We 

Seth Price 3:19

tell them that. But the flip side is, if you were, you know, if somebody is a Red Sox fan, that’s not the worst, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have, I’m sure, leniently, for somebody who went to their alma 

Jay Ruane 3:31

matter, absolutely, one of the things I used to do all the time, all the time, when I was a young public defender. And I’ll put this out there for anybody who’s listening, I gotta find it. I haven’t used it in probably 10 or 15, probably more like 1520 years. I had a binder that I kept, and in the back of the binder, in my jury selection area, I had the name colors, the name of every local college, their colors, and their mascot. And so somebody would come in and they’d be like, Oh, I went to Sacred Heart. I was like, the red and white, Gotta love those pioneers. And I went to Scranton. I didn’t, I didn’t go to Sacred Heart, but just having that ability to drop in, and, I mean, you know, when I was a college kid, we used to, you know, come up with those, you know, that was like a trivia question, who’s the mascot, what’s their colors, that type of thing, and it worked a lot in jury selection. And so, you know, it’s getting to know those little things that do make a difference.

Seth Price 4:32

I preach this, and whether or not it’s scaled with the firm, and I’ve had trouble, especially with some overseas people sort of adopting this. But 215, area code, if you see that on caller ID, my first question is pats or Geno’s, and they’re like, No, the Alejandro’s, you know? It’s like, it starts a conversation, right? If it’s a 312, are you Cubs or White Sox? Everybody’s got an opinion or, like, baseball, like, you know, but there’s going to be something. And I feel like, as as. As you can get some of that. It both, whether it’s for intake or whether it’s for jury selection, those things matter. 

Jay Ruane 5:07

Getting to know the people that you’re dealing with does matter. In fact, we, you know, we do that as part of our internal moves. And I don’t know, does Price Benowitz, or does blue shark have an internal newsletter that goes out monthly, just to your employees, yeah, about what’s going on in the in the in the firm, and 

Seth Price 5:25

whether or not each of them has been consistent. I can’t tell you. They have been started, they’ve been used. And so I think the blue shark one, they’ve moved, we’ve moved more to Slack rather than an email newsletter. But there, you know, it is something that’s been there, and, you know, those, those are great, great, great highlights. And to a certain extent, started to try to merge the two when possible, when there’s personal stuff, you know, trying to try to incorporate that, you know, in a perfect world, we’d have 17 different newsletters, but it’s hard enough getting one good one out. Well, it’s amazing. 

Jay Ruane 6:02

I mean, you know, somebody today gave me a little pushback. I was doing a coaching call, and they were like, you know, I have 300 clients in the last two years. I’m, you know, I’m just a solo Why should I do a newsletter? And I was like, well, that’s 300 people that you’ve served well, and they’re not thinking about you. But if you hit them with even just an email newsletter, not necessarily a print one, just an email newsletter, you’re going to remain top of mind with them for the next couple of days. And so you should be doing this. You should be having proactive outreach, outreach to people criminal 

Seth Price 6:36

lawyers, like, I want to be your lawyer for life. It’s true for most people, right? It’s not like, Hey, have you been arrested before? It’s like, if you need anything, you need a will, I’ll find you that you’re getting divorced. I got you. Like, the idea is, can you be that person? Because you only have 300 300 is not that many, but at the same time, 300 people are gonna have some legal need, and if you start to figure that out and build your referral network, God bless Yeah. I mean, and that’s you know, I know you’re in the digital marketing business

Jay Ruane 7:05

And I just think there’s a lot of lawyers out there that are thinking they can just, you know, swipe a credit card and get leads to give them a call, and you see it on all these social networks of, you know, we can get you 10 guaranteed leads this month for X amount of dollars, that type of thing. I get them in my Facebook feed all the time. But I just wonder why everyone is just ignoring developing referrals. As you know. I just think there 

Seth Price 7:32

are people out there that evangelize, if you know, just make, you know, random calls to your former clients until I’m sure it will be the question, like everything else, if you call, like if you got time, more time than money, God bless it. Sure. It’s great, staying in touch. We’ve tried scaling it outside of the practitioner, lawyers themselves. It’s harder. It doesn’t, doesn’t do as much. You know, it’s any touch that you can do the check in calls. I mean, I think that it’s one of those things. The question is, what else could you do with that time? So I like the concept. But, you know, in like, the internal newsletter, you may do it for a year, are you going to continue it? Well, I’m 

Jay Ruane 8:13

not doing it at all other people I’ve delegated to are making sure that it gets done. I mean, that’s, that’s the thing. Like, there’s only so many hours in the day that you can work. And so you need to be conscious about what you’re spending your energy on. And I think that’s, you know, that’s something that all of us as law firm owners need to really think about, where are we spending our time? Because our time is our most precious commodity. I can make more money, I can make more time, right? 

Seth Price 8:40

So I see a lot of Gary V A lot of Gary a lot of Dan Martell talking about saying no to more things being purposeful. And, you know, I’ve been playing the LinkedIn game a bunch recently. It had some big hits, and it’s amazing what works on LinkedIn and what doesn’t, but a lot of friends of the show have been very active on LinkedIn. But are 

Unknown Speaker 8:57

you just preaching to the choir? There? Are you? 

Seth Price 9:01

That’s not the point. Who cares about that? Well, I want to talk about LinkedIn. So you know, it is not that you’re preaching to the choir. In fact, I think very often the choir preaching to is not monetizable what it does, and I now had two posts in the last couple months go over a couple 100,000 impressions. That’s over 100,000 different people on each one seeing the post in some form or fashion. What I can tell you is, from a personal brand point of view, when I go to an event, people know who I am, and people who know who I am, I’m top of mind. I see you everywhere. And so I’m not saying that this is converting to, hey, I got a referral front of the phone show. Tom Tony told me, Hey, you just closed the case. Had a $60,000 check to Himself directly attributed to a LinkedIn cap. Great. That’s awesome. But you know that that’s just like if you made phone calls, if you took all the time making LinkedIn posts and you made phone calls to former clients, you’d probably get a good. Client out of that as well over time, what I can tell you is, at scale, I’m seeing, from a thought leadership point of view, people out there seeing it at a at a cadence that I haven’t seen before. So if Jay Ruane wants to be the criminal mastermind consultant for all criminal lawyers, yes, a lot of non criminal lawyers will see you. But when you get that type of visibility, it’s genuine. So when somebody’s trying to say, You know what, I need some help with stuff. Oh, and they can connect the dots. Whether it’s only a digital marketing agency with blue shark, or whether they need a PI case or a criminal case or whatever, I can definitely see the cadence of referrals picking up. The only thing I can equate it to would be when you spend money on offline media, radio or TV, you don’t know where it’s coming from. It doesn’t make any sense, but your calls are up. I kind of get that impression that the you know, we know a lot of people, then there’s a second tier that we sort of know and a third tier that doesn’t know us at all. I think it just amplifies all of that. I’m less caring whether it’s acquire 

Jay Ruane 11:01

or not, yeah, because, you know, I tried the whole LinkedIn game for a while, and I was putting out content that I thought, you know, in in my world, it was what happens if you are a pharmaceutical sales rep and you get a DWI, right? Because that was content that I thought, it’s very specific. So then I then I stepped back. I was like, what if you have a professional license and you get arrested, you know, general stuff. And then I was like, let me put out just some general stuff about how to manage your practice better. And I’m thinking to myself, who wants to hear from me? I mean, I 

Seth Price 11:37

look you now are an established thought leader in the space of running, you’ve read at scale, we talked about for a long period of time, and a lot of people made a lot of mistakes, learned 

Jay Ruane 11:46

a lot more mistakes than I’ve made. 

Seth Price 11:49

You’re coaching a lot of people. You see the good and bad coming in. So in that sense, look, I had Neil Patel on my digital marketing podcast the other day. In fact, we should rerun this here, so they was really interesting. And one of the things that he brought up was the fact that his biggest hits, like he goes viral on nonsense about how to leverage your Instagram account. However, it was a very specific niche post that landed him Adobe as a client, okay, but I think Jay Wayne comes from a different place. You intentionally those who don’t know Jay morphed away from big federal criminal cases to blue collar widgets like DUI specifically for the majority, no one case makes or breaks you. So at this point, your your biggest thing is not like, Can I get one DUI from this? Not that you don’t want one DUI, but can you be top of mind? For all the people that know you, a lot of people, we think a lot of ourselves, but not everybody. There’s a guy in Connecticut Who’s that guy, the fact that it’s always up there, that’s the play. So for you, no whale is going to see this and come running. The question is, can you be? Can you have? Can you mix in substantive content that shows you to be a DUI expert with gravitas? The stuff that I am going super viral by LinkedIn standards is, you know, with stuff about gaps on resumes and other things that have to do 

Jay Ruane 13:20

with culture and thought leadership at the firm. But if that’s if that’s the case, then I mean, shit, why don’t I just film myself baking bread this weekend, edit into a one minute video talk about, you know, bread, and then that’s like, really weird on LinkedIn, and more people will be like, What the hell is this guy teaching us bread this isn’t Facebook or Instagram. That would be more newsworthy if it worked. I don’t think it’s gonna worry as founding espousing about how to run a firm better. 

Seth Price 13:51

No, because I think what it’s gonna come down to is when you take an opinion and you hold fast to it and somebody disagrees with it, that’s what gets those view counts up, and so when you like, or rags to riches, I actually did a post the other day talking about, like, my frustration with the I was the worst kid in my law school class, and now I’m successful. That’s great. Good for you, but it’s not the only path. And like, when you are the worst kid in your law school class. It’s going to close a lot of doors. And I’m not saying that, you know, look, and I’m not saying that that’s awful. I said, you know, like, sort of inside joke was there, you know, maybe not be a mathematician, but I would guess that one half of the law school class is in the bottom half, half of all law school graduates in the bottom half of their class. So it’s not that, it’s that, it’s not that the idea of celebrating it look maybe that lights a fire, because you have no other choices, that you have to go the entrepreneurial route. Great was good for you, but if you have options, to me, that’s a positive and the experiences you may gain from those build and help you to other directions and open doors. And so it. It was so it is, it is funny, because there is a lot of, you know, I was the, you know, overcoming adversity. It sells, and I think it does very well there. To me, I like the stuff where J Ruane is has an opinion that he’s not hiring people with experience, because it’s just not cost effective. I’m only hiring people right out of school, and then you have the people saying you’re ageist, and you’re this, and you’re that, it becomes like, if you can get that, that that cadence, to come out, it’s really, it’s really interesting. On the one about gaps on resumes, I was called the POS several times in the in the comments, and that was, you know, it’s just from your mom. Exactly No. Mom like the comment. She always like that. She’s an easy mark. But the thought is, you know, I was saying I want to know if somebody’s independently wealthy, that was one of my throwaway lines. And people, hold on, what’s what’s your business? I’m like, Look, if somebody doesn’t need to be working, I’d like to know that. I also want to know why somebody has a gap on the resume. And other people, what if they had cancer? And they don’t want to tell you, okay, the worst they could say is that I want to tell you, but I want to ask. It’s been made my whole living. Like, you know, you got to ask. If you don’t ask, you know, you don’t care, 

Jay Ruane 16:09

yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s interesting. I just, I get it, but I’m wondering if LinkedIn is the post COVID cocktail party for entrepreneurs who are out there just chatting with each other, but really not moving the needle anywhere. I mean, it’s this. I see a lot of people seemingly being thought leaders in the legal entrepreneurial space, saying the same things. And I’m thinking to myself, dude, if you were doing it, I’d know about you, but all you’re doing is is quoting back platitudes that you heard from somebody else and spinning it a little, I don’t know. I just feel like it’s for those young 

Seth Price 16:49

people. Many of those people, I know, some of them have some sort of look. There are two categories, one or just like smaller lawyers that are trying to gain attention any which way they can for cheap. And some of them have a widget within the legal space, coaching or otherwise, which it brings attention. Attention you know, is difficult to get. It’s expensive. It right now, given the number like when I post, I’m amazed at how many people have read my entire post, or multiple posts that I know well, I got a law school reunion coming up. I see people at cocktail parties. It’s a conversation that, again, if you put stuff that you’re proud of, that gets people now with that, which is why, if we go back to the bigger you’re in this conversation with that comes 1000 different random opportunities, and I’ve shared with you before my code worth with my partner. Whenever I say, That’s interesting, that was code word for it’s not going to make money, you know. And you know, the the question is, it’s not a free lunch, because just like when you do those reach out calls, you may end up speaking to people that really aren’t going to make you any money, right? The same thing. The same thing happens here, where you get offered things that aren’t the things you should be focused on. And because you’re trying to have these conversations, you’re there now there, and you end up with all this additional stuff coming at you, right? 

Seth Price 18:14

The 

Jay Ruane 18:14

perfect example, you know, you offer, hey, I can get you a speaking engagement in front of this audience. And I’m thinking it’s a bunch of pi lawyers. Yeah, I can give them some ideas that work in my space, but is that the audience I should really be in front of? Because they’re not my people. And as I get older, I’m getting more and more into I know my audience. I know who my people are. I talked to one guy today who’s a practicing lawyer for 20 years. He says that last year was one of his better years. And he grows $66,000 

Unknown Speaker 18:47

and I two 

Jay Ruane 18:49

things, you could be the help me. And I said, I gave him some ideas. I said, this is, you know, these are some things you could think of. And you’re 

Seth Price 18:57

onto something. If you’re going to make two trips a year, you’re going to go to the two different, you know, DUI colleges that are out there. They seem, you have one guy that they both seem to like, and you’re, you’re going to, you know, be able to, you speak to your people. And they are the ones most likely to have a referral that said, I’ve seen like a Mark O’Mara who shows up with a trial lawyer conference every year, and has, you know, has made himself. I mean, that was just that, but made himself a national name amongst the fu players that he is. He is in that elite glitterati. So it really depends on how you play it, you know, for you, if I’m Jay and I’m playing Moneyball with it, yeah, if you’re you’re going to go to the national DUI and criminal conferences, and you’re going to the local bars where no other DUI lawyers show up. I came up in my memory the other day Jay Ruane in front of a booth wearing, you know, you know branded garb looks like you’re selling the the little sponges. You know that, yet, you know there’s. 

Jay Ruane 20:00

To look and that was that was at the Connecticut Bar Association’s annual meeting, like, 11 or 12 years ago, I got a booth and I got fidget spinners, and I just met, I met people, and they’re like, Well, why are you here? I’m like to meet new lawyers, to meet people I haven’t met before. And they’re like, right? But what are you trying to sell us? I was like, nothing. I just want you to tell me who you are and what 

Seth Price 20:23

kind of you. Look, you were like, if you if you get a criminal or DUI case, I’m your guy. Look, you’re there to meet people, but you weren’t there. You weren’t there networking. You were there with a freaking booth with, you know, Ruane, you know criminal DUI defense. You mean, you were loud and proud and you, God bless. I am surprised you haven’t, because you are so good at it. I’m surprised you have not done more. You know, we all think about having a person who could stand there, one of my mentors, Rick Harris, out of Vegas. He has what he has, a full time media person. She does a TV show or a YouTube show for him, that’s amazing. And she’s at every Vegas lawyer conference. And you know what? As this was, this is old news. 10 years ago, he was doing 20 million a year in referral business. He has an entire warehouse packing gifts to send out. I mean, again, Connecticut is less sexy, but for you, maybe you’re going to the New York and New Jersey criminal conferences. You know, that’s 

Speaker 2 21:24

why Connecticut sexy, yeah. 

Seth Price 21:28

Well, look, think about it, they don’t, they don’t cover Connect. How many times have I called you for a D for a New York Metro referral, and I should, I’m from New York, like, once you’re known for that, you get those calls? 

Jay Ruane 21:42

Yeah, I’m really wondering, like, what you know, where I should be spending my attention and my time 

Seth Price 21:48

to me, order of operations national, New York. I like this better and better as I think about it, New York and Connect New York and New Jersey. Maybe you know, whatever, 

Jay Ruane 21:59

what do you know is a is a is a big time criminal lawyer in New Jersey who I’ve gotten to know, and his firm, criminal defense firm, is sponsored the New Jersey family law outing, and, like, there’s their annual seminar. Because he was like, put me in front of a, you know, two or 300 family lawyers. I’m going to generate referrals out of this, out of this, you know, sob and that, that was a genius idea by him for a number of years. I wish there was a family lawyer Association here in Connecticut, but there really isn’t 

Speaker 2 22:39

one. Maybe I should create it or create the Facebook group, yeah? 

Unknown Speaker 22:44

And then just use that as a springboard to get in front of 

Seth Price 22:47

them. Well, you’re in front of them, yeah? Find a Connecticut family lawyer. You you co start it. You create, there’s not a Connecticut Facebook group already, you know, there is one. You put it out there, and there you are. You’re the, you’re the CO moderator of that. Boom, 

Jay Ruane 23:00

there you got, folks, there’s a golden nugget, and that’s something that you could post on LinkedIn. Seth, in one of your posts that’ll go viral. 

Seth Price 23:09

But now wait till you do it first, so that I’ll take the it’s 

Jay Ruane 23:13

all good. It’s all good. So how’s your summer looking? I mean, we’re halfway through June. I’m pleased to say I actually did post on LinkedIn the other day that we are two weeks away from a one now, one week away from the end of the quarter. And I got all my rocks done. All my leadership team got their rocks done. My my pods got their rocks done. So like we’re doing a fantastic job. How is your summer looking? Have you guys even thought about your third quarter? Rocks? Are you? 

Seth Price 23:44

We’re getting close to that. We personally got a couple weeks with Fisher and you man, through through Portugal. On a business side, some good news. We got hit very hard. Of all our divisions, all our divisions, all our divisions of price benefits, our federal, white collar, federal stuff, just got hit hard with the new administration. The Justice Department just landed a case that could be a third of our year. You know, after the first third of the year being really bad. You know, it’s interesting that the issue that I’m dealing with on the PI side is that with growth, and we’ve grown really nicely, cash flow has become a much bigger problem. Before, when you’re smaller, we just funded everything with our criminal money and and now that is it is much harder. We have Esquire, you know, line of credit. I hate lines of credit, but at the same time, we need to start using it much smarter, making sure all co you know, we’ve resisted case costs before we start moving towards that, starting to look at, you know, we budgeted for marketing, and all of a sudden the first quarter is a. Crappy, crappy quarter. First half of the year was not was, was okay. But if you’re playing the PI game, the second half of the year is where you make, is where your money comes in, right? And it’s just fascinating. So all of that there right now just trying to execute, like there are times when you’re looking at the next big thing, and there are times when you if we could just execute on what we have under under the hood right now, we’d be in great 

Jay Ruane 25:26

shape. Yeah, I think that’s one of the things. One of the problems, I think, for a lot of us as legal entrepreneurs, is that, you know, we are sort of like that Quick Start mentality, shiny object syndrome. But how many times have you evaluated to make sure that you’re actually doing the stuff that you committed to do? 235, 10 years ago that brought you business. And, I mean, of course, I’m all in favor of, you know, get getting rid of the stuff that doesn’t work anymore. But, like, I mean, I went when I was the president of our state Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and for a year or two before that, every time I saw a trial victory, I’d send him a bottle of wine or send him, hey, congratulations. That type of thing. I’ve gotten away from that. I need to get back into that, you know, we got a new book that came out this week that I’m hoping that did a trial handbook that I’ve been working on for a couple of years. I need to get that into the hands of people, you know, and so it’s my motto, my motto, my mantra for the second half of the year is everything old is new again. Like, let’s go back to their playbook, where we know stuff worked and we just sort of stepped away from it. Maybe we stepped away from it because of COVID. Maybe we stepped away from it because the person who was managing it left us. Maybe we stepped away from it because we had a bad experience, but we didn’t think of it in terms of the bigger picture and see what works and get back to doing that stuff. I mean, shit. I used to go to lunch at least once a week with a crew of lawyers. That was always good for referrals, and I just kind of got lazy and stopped doing that because I don’t want to leave my office. I got a really good restaurant nearby. 

Seth Price 27:05

Be realistic, it’s going to be once a month, you know, you know, and you like, you’re going to make two calls a day. You’re not going to try to do 20 a day. You know, it’s, there’s, there’s lots systems. If we go back to Jared, you know, if you have a system in place, it works, you know. And a heart to heart, to heart. We’ve mentioned before, but a friend of the show, top toner, he was, you know, and I think he posted about this on LinkedIn, you know, we’re sitting there, and he’s asking me about, like, this, you know, needs a coach for this or that. I’m like, Dude, the stuff’s inside your freaking noggin. You knew, like, he had some real issues within his firm. He’s been very public about, go fix those freaking issues. Like, you know, looking for another nugget that’s going to make you money. Like to go for lunch with these people on this that’s not he has issues right under his roof, and if he fixes those, he’s going to be really, really happy. And if he doesn’t, those nuggets aren’t going to make a difference. 

Jay Ruane 27:57

Well, I think the thing is, is that we, we chase the fun new stuff, because we don’t want to deal with the shit stuff that we know exists. And so we’re always like, Oh, the next thing is going to solve everything magically. You know what solves it? Magically, time, attention and decision making. And maybe that doesn’t have to be you. Maybe the decision is, I’m bringing somebody in who’s going to manage these issues for me, right? 

Seth Price 28:22

But with, but with the knowledge you better invest in somebody and know, like, how many people have you known that brought in X to run a show and it’s just a meltdown? I mean, employees in general are a risk. You bring something to make decisions that’s something that’s earned over a long period of time, you know, relinquish that. It needs to be relinquished at some point. That’s awesome. And I have. I’m now in my third year with our director of ops, and she and I’m getting there, and I’m still not great, and I, every once in a while, I sort of question, like, she looks at me, I’m like, Okay, it’s yours. Go do it. 

Jay Ruane 28:58

So, so let me tell you how I approach this. And who knows, maybe one of our listeners has another approach for this. But when I, when we started our, you know, level 10 meetings, leadership meetings, whatever you want to call it, right? I said to my my team, listen, you’re gonna have me to make 10 decisions this week, right? 10 decisions come to me, and maybe you don’t have all 10 this week, but the max decisions I’m going to make for you guys is 10, and then two years later, we’re now down to I will make eight decisions. You will have to tell me the other two the decisions and why you made it, and I’ll give some input, but I trust you to make those decisions. And the goal is, at the end of the my eight more years that I’m not going to be making any decisions, I’m decisions, and they get to now have, they have to decide which are, which are questions that Jay should be the one answering, or we can just answer on ourselves, you know. And it’s I’m training my people to take work off my plate, because, quite frankly, they know what they’re doing. They know what the right decision is. They’re just shy and not make wanting to make that decision because they don’t want to deal with the consequences. And I’ve told them, Look, the consequences are going to hit all of us if you make the right decision or the wrong decision. So I’m okay with you guys making decisions. I trust you to act in the best interest of the firm. And they make decisions, and I may disagree with them, but if they can logically tell me why they made it, it makes perfect sense. That’s the route we go. And so as of July one, I’m down to only they can only ask me for seven decisions. The other three they gotta make on their own. And I love 

Seth Price 30:33

it, and look, and I gotta say, that’s generally my mantra is always a mistake is made and somebody thought about it and chose wrong. I don’t like it, but I get it. 

Jay Ruane 30:42

I just don’t like people who just make a decision and they put no thought into it well, 

Seth Price 30:47

or didn’t make a decision. It weighed itself like that’s, that’s the bigger issue, right? If they’re, you know, if somebody says, Hey, I did it for this reason, sure, it didn’t work out right. It wasn’t right. You didn’t, you know, build and grow. So it is fascinating. And, you know, with each of these things, it’s exciting. And then as you get those people, they’re more and more valuable to you. Now you have the issue, especially some of our smaller firms, now you got to pay more, because you can’t lose those people because you’ve invested so much in them, right? It’s, you know, it’s an interesting, interesting dynamic. You know, don’t train them. They may stay. Train them. They may they, you know, you, you, you need to butched up the the phrase. But the idea is, if you don’t put that effort into elevating people, you’ll never even have the chance to get there. 

Jay Ruane 31:31

So the last topic I want to talk about, this would be really brief, but I just thought I’d bring it up. I had somebody resign today, and this is interesting to me, a remote worker based in Iowa, really good teammate, and that type of thing. And the reason for the resignation has nothing to do with us, but they said, I gotta resign. I’m an introvert by nature, and I haven’t left my house for more than 15 minutes in the last six months, I don’t talk to anybody. I’m all alone, and it’s basically me and my two cats, and I go to the supermarket and come home. I need an office to go to to bounce off of other people. And I never even thought about that as an issue, okay? And I’m probably sad to see her go, and it’s definitely the right thing for her mental health. Well, hold on, 

Seth Price 32:21

I got an idea. 

Speaker 2 32:22

Where does she live? Iowa, where I don’t know off the top of my head, 

Seth Price 32:27

you find the closest industrious. I’ve done this before. You pay the $250 a month and you give her a place to go, meaning I’m being serious, like we intentionally at blue shark didn’t go office list coming out of COVID, right? We wanted to. We didn’t pay for all those awesome there was no rent for quite a while. But having a clubhouse where people go to for meetings once or twice a week and then team meetings once a year was a huge deal. Is it? Do you fly that? Has this person ever been flown into your office? 

Unknown Speaker 32:58

No, she’s only been with us for nine months we haven’t 

Seth Price 33:01

done but I’m just saying we encourage people to come in to domestic people to come in. That’s on the international don’t, but come in for holiday parties, summer parties, whatever, find an excuse to have because what you’re saying is there’s no connection. It’s just a, J, O, B, well, actually, she came in 

Jay Ruane 33:21

through an existing team member and actually trained at that woman’s house because they both work remotely. 

Seth Price 33:27

Understood. And I’m just saying, Before we had somebody who left, who was moving this before COVID, 10 years ago, somebody was moving to New York to be with their ailing dad, and had to, like, help him out with his business for a few hours a day. So I have to resign, like, nope. Don’t accept it. We’ll set you up remote. And I would say, you want to be social. I’m going to find you a social setting. You’ll find plenty of people there. You can go there, have coffee breaks with them. But if you like this job and we’re paying you a fair wage, like, let’s keep this, let’s, let’s, let’s make this work. And because that can be you can buy the sociability, 

Unknown Speaker 33:58

right? 

Jay Ruane 34:01

Like, you have to be careful. You gotta end this. We gotta end this session here. Now, Seth, because I gotta go and look and see if I can find, like a we work, or Regis or someplace I can, I can park her and give her work to do. Look. 

Seth Price 34:13

It could be in somebody else’s office. You know, could be, you know, what town is it in, where you put this out to every what town 

Jay Ruane 34:22

I don’t know, because I’ve, I’ve really had limited interaction with her, because my leadership team is well 

Seth Price 34:27

understood. And I, and I spent time in Iowa as a baby lawyer for interstate power, running all over the state, defending deposition. So what you know I got, I got, I got lawyer friends in Davenport and Dubuque, nobody in Clinton, but there’s a baseball team I went to see, but we’re going to find somebody for 

Jay Ruane 34:45

you. All right. Well, thank you, Seth, thank you, folks. If you do have at the office space in Iowa, drop a link in the comments or note in the comments and let me know where it is, because maybe I’ll park somebody with you and pay you some rent. But folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the law firm blue. Print. Let me say that again, that Okay, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week here in the law firm blueprint. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go. On the go with our podcast. You can find it wherever you get your podcast, and you can catch us live every Thursday, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn or live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint that’s gonna do it for me. I’m Jay Rui. He is Seth Price. Thank you all. Bye for now you.