Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello. Welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is, Seth Price down there at the home office. Seth, it is a miserable day, cold and chilly up here in Connecticut. How’s it doing down in your greater capital area?

 

Seth Price  0:22  

It’s not terrible. It’s like 60ish, little overcast, but heading off to, you know, in this soon as we finish this, heading off to Costa Rica with the family to end the year. So very excited.

 

Jay Ruane  0:34  

That’s fantastic. I’m not going till after the holiday. I’m just doing Orlando. a bowl game, and, you know, doing something, but I’m doing it all on points, which is something that we want to talk about today. I was able to book two trips, one to Florida. flight and hotel all free, and then to London. flight and one hotel room all free based on points, because I realized, looking at how much I spend on credit cards over the course of the year, I need to be sort of smart and use that to my advantage, because it’s non taxable income, right? You don’t get taxed on the points and the things that you get to spend your points on. So what are you doing with your points? Because you between BluShark and Price Benowitz and the high living that Seth price and the..

 

Seth Price  1:27  

That’s the one piece where, like, I actually have probably look, I’ll caveat all of this, right? You’re probably smarter off if you just find a 2% cash back card that you don’t pay tax on. That’s that’s probably going to get you better than 90% of what I’m talking about today, but there are some real stuff. The credit card game for businesses this year was real if you travel the lounges. The fight between Amex Capital One and Chase is legit. If you know you airports.

 

Jay Ruane  1:54  

I hit up the chase lounge at. the chase lounge and the AMEX lounge are next to each other in one of the terminals at LaGuardia,

 

Jay Ruane  4:53  

Yeah, I mean, for you know, it’s, it’s one of these things that, if you have the time, you could pay attention to it, or if you’re obsessed. 

 

Seth Price  5:00  

And I’m just trying to give people the top four things, yeah, right. Internet spend serious multiplier that really adds up. Picking one, whether Chase business platinum or Amex business gold, picking one of those, because three and four to one multipliers go a long way, 

 

Jay Ruane  6:14  

Yeah, see, I don’t I if I have to pull the trigger, I have to pull the trigger. You know, once I’m going, I’m going all 

 

Seth Price  6:58  

Well, look, and, you know, with love, I don’t love the concept of New Years resolutions because they usually don’t get kept. That said the plan. Let’s, let’s talk about, you know what?

 

Jay Ruane  10:36  

Yeah, but I mean, for at least in my perspective, I would rather have a lower margin and not have to cross the threshold of a courthouse again right?

 

Seth Price  10:45  

And there’s some point you hit your number, and you’re like, you know, I said that and but you know what I want my two suites in London and that, more of a squeeze that I want. That’s the six seven.

 

Jay Ruane  10:58  

Yeah, six seven. There you go. So at least for me, you know, one of the things that we discovered in the last in the third quarter, we actually did a really deep data analysis of our phone, outbound phone lead follow up system, and what we found was our my intake, people were hitting the desk, 8am 9am and immediately starting to call their follow ups, trying to, you know, shake the trees and get leads to close. What we found when we did a data analysis of our outbound phone calls is that, you know, a significant portion of those calls in that first two hour, three hour time block, we’re going straight to voicemail. People were not answering it. And so we took a step back, and we said, you know, there has to be a better way, right? So a little test, and what we’ve decided to do, and what did decide to do, and have done now is at between eight and nine, our intake people will send a text message to the lead, saying, we’re going to call you this afternoon and answer any other questions that you may have. And we saw an explosion of people answering the calls in the afternoon.

 

Seth Price  12:09  

Absolutely, I would say, maybe an AB test. You know, look, yeah, great, but like 11am look, I still remember this from the news. When I did local news for a period, I took my law degree, I was going to be a news reporter. I remember, if you went to certain neighborhoods and you wanted to interview people before 11am or even noon wasn’t happening, right? And that’s essentially the phenomenon you’re getting, which is, if there are people who cycle is not waking up at 8am we’ve both expanded our hours. It’s one of the beautiful things about international is your number of hours on the phone. Just like, you know, as we’ve scaled family law, we are getting more and more serious about the sign consultation and something I would say to the audience, which is, every time you think you have it figured out, it’s you know, you’re like, Don’t with the moment you get not too complacent, but you’re like, Hey, I got a system in place. This person’s taking care of it. It’s just, it’s always a moving piece, and that, you know, we, you know, we hired a new lawyer in the DC office for family. Very excited, very competent guy, and his first few days didn’t have that many cases, actually, first three weeks and I’m like, brand new lawyer. Why even have a consultation fee? I know in family, it’s a standard thing, right? I limited consultation fee, and the next day and a half, he had signed three cases, right? It’s, you know, again, if the answer is, he’s in a 50% close rate, you know what? He can spend an average of 13 minutes a call doing a soft landing for cases he doesn’t want in order, like, when you have more time and money figuring that out. I know in criminal free consultations there, obviously in PI, but one of the things, if you’re in trust, in estates, or you’re in family, playing around with the free versus paid, assuming that you have the sales staff. I met a guy who did was it immigration? And they did free consultations all day long. It was an Arizona play with a non lawyer ownership. And I thought it was genius. I mean, it was not great representation, but they would hire lawyers who would sit there and, do you know 30 minute consults, 16 consults a day, was their model. 

 

Jay Ruane  15:17  

And that’s the thing. I mean, what’s crazy to me is my call, outbound call volume dropped 12% and my revenues went up 20%.

 

Jay Ruane  15:26  

what’s that? 

 

Jay Ruane  15:29  

So, so say we were doing, you know, in a month, we were doing 1000 outbound calls. Now we were down to only doing 900 outbound calls because we had stopped doing those nine to noon calls that were going to 

 

Seth Price  16:08  

So, but the A answer would be, can you figure out how to deal with it when they’re coming in, like, why are they going to fall back in the first place? I mean, that’s the next step, and it’s, it is, you know the struggle is real, and as you grow then, is your staffing, right? And you know, have you? You know, as we’ve leveraged International, certain of the International are unicorns that are amazing and are comparable to the US, and some you’re, you’re…

 

Jay Ruane  16:33  

We just let an international person go today, because one of the one of my other employees International, happened to be on a Google meet with them, and heard music, and said, Are you playing a video game right now? And they said, Yeah, I play a video game while I’m working in downtime. And then we were looking and, wow, they were spending, you know, a majority of their day playing a video game while they were supposed to be working. So we had to cut so, I mean, there are some rock stars I’ve got, I’ve gotten three rock stars internationally that I wish.

 

Seth Price  17:10  

They come in and out. I mean, some of it, some of it, we talked about a prior show. Some of it’s just, hey, like we I remember a guy showed up. This was a real battle at BluShark of whether or not you could listen to podcasts while working. And I was like, hard, no, like, I mean, I’m sure there are people that were virtual that do it, but like, learning, I was like, absolutely not. listen to whatever music you want. But no, that is, that’s not. And it was not, this was not universally well received. There are people like, you know, I should be able to listen to a podcast. I’m like, Fu, I don’t want words in your head. I mean, music, we sort of have made peace with it’s awesome. But like, can you, should you be consuming content while trying to work? I mean, I guess if you in theory, people could say they do both. I don’t buy it. Maybe I’m old.

 

Jay Ruane  17:52  

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy especially in what we do. I mean, there’s a level of concentration that’s necessary to make sure that you don’t screw up. Can you listen to a podcast while you are, you know, cooking french fries, probably, right?

 

Seth Price  18:04  

No, exactly, but, if you were trying to do fine, you know, fine dining, right? You know, you you’re trying, you know. And here we’re looking for nuance and how somebody’s feeling or speaking to try to sign a case. Like, no, that’s not that again. I think sometimes it’s a reset, but sometimes it’s and I think that, you know, a big fan of this guy, really outside the box, brilliant thinker, Angel Reyes, out of Texas. And I believe he has all of his international people in pods with Brady Bunch style, nine or 10 people with a pod leader, with their all on camera all the time, where they’re together, like they’re in the office, right?

 

Jay Ruane  18:45  

I’m curious about that. We probably bring them in to speak about it, because that’s one of the things that you and I have talked about. Like, you know, I can remember being downstairs in your pit, and you would have a, you’re a big screen TV, and people were on camera, you know, because you want them to feel like they’re part of something, rather than on an island.

 

Seth Price  19:03  

I look, I try it with my fought. It’s been a battle that I’ve not always won, but you know, to me, like, I know a BluShark was a big deal. Like, we have hard rule it to be on camera. There were people trying to show up to Team zooms, not on camera.

 

Jay Ruane  19:16  

Like, no, you gotta be. You got to be on camera. 

 

Jay Ruane  21:06  

I think, I think you’re absolutely right. I think, you know, one of the problems is that we are solos and small firms, and do you need some, some much larger scale to be able to see some of the results of some of those things. I just, you know, but the interesting thing talking about, you know, less service and that type of thing, I think that’s the future. I think, you know, paying attention to what your clients are getting is going to be your difference maker. Everyone’s talking about AI and shit. We use a lot of AI in my firm, but I’m pushing my firm and I’m talking to my people regularly that AI is the tool that’s giving you more time to do the stuff that AI can’t do. And so I want outreach to clients more regularly. I want touch points. I want spending extra time on the phone as necessary. I want those types of things filling the hours that AI has bought you back. AI is in here so that you can, necessarily, you know, handle more cases. I’m pretty happy with what our revenue. I mean, sure. Could I go up 10% make a little more revenue? Yeah, I’ll take that. I’m not looking to double the work output of my lawyers and my staff, and just say, Okay, well, we bought back. You know, 12 hours this week. We’re gonna fill it every hour, every minute, with more work. No, no, I want to work on those relationships, because I think that that’s where we can be a difference maker, utilizing AI to to really refine our relationships with our clients, our referral sources and the like. And I think that’s something that everybody who’s rushing headfirst into AI is missing. They’re like, well, we can scale up, and we can take more business. I’m like, Well, wait a minute, you know, because there’s some things that AI can’t do. And if you can, if you can pay attention to the things that real humans need to do and connect with one another, you’re better setting you’re setting yourself up better for the long term.

 

Seth Price  23:02  

Yeah, but let me throw it back at you. Look, agreed? I think that that that is where, when you have time savings into interpersonal but as you create the systems, and as you layer tech on top of it, AI or otherwise, you know, I’ll give you an example. I move. I’ve been with one medical which Bezos bought. It’s now an Amazon, you know, organization. You know, it is amazing how so much of the medical experience is seamless from you know, stuff that used to be hell, calling up to get a prescription refilled and getting to the right person. It’s that touch of the button, scheduling appointments, getting, you know, different pieces. But today I had a question for one of my kids that I couldn’t get through. It got to an amazing customer service person, well beyond who you could have if every call was going to them. So I think one of the thing you wouldn’t be able to justify whatever salary they were paying this guy was significantly more than again, they also weren’t in office, but I went to have my knee checked out the other day. My wife had ACL and I had some little strain from tennis. And like, want to see, is this something more? Is this inflammation? And it was an old, clunky, very established best in class ortho practice. It was absurd. You know, I came in the, you know, insurance is already in. She wants to re scan the card that they already have in their system. Mean this? It blows your mind. Yeah, their computer couldn’t sign up a new patient over the weekend. My wife had to remember the practice of with same insurance, I just got an appointment or her name and flipped it on Monday morning. But like the idiocy and that when you see a ZocDoc, which I know charges a lot of money to doctors, but the idea that if we could get to the point, and I guess that’s where these case statuses and honas are trying to push into the market, where if you can give people most of what they want and save your people for when they really could have the interpersonal. Those are points when you really want it, and there’s points when you just want the information, right? And if you can get people to the point where they have everything they need, but when there’s a time for interpersonal talk, you’re able to afford a better quality interaction, because it’s not, you’re not you know, you’re not pushing to you don’t have 12 admins dealing with the public. But rather, you have three. If you’re back bottom, top 25% how much better is that than your bottom? You know? Anyway, that’s those are the things that I look at that I’m hoping that as AI comes because if you look at some of the stats on major like s p5 100, and the big tech companies that we all love to invest in, their layoffs are real. Numbers are not nothing. So you’re saying you don’t want to lay people off. These guys have figured it out at scale. It’s only a matter of time before you have that ability. The question is, can we keep our humanity and demonstrate our value compared to some of the juggernauts in our space, or maybe not your space, you are the juggernaut. But if you’re able to get your people to the point where their interactions are the ones that are the highest value and don’t have to take care of little stuff, to me, that’s the ultimate win. Yeah.

 

Jay Ruane  26:17  

I mean, I absolutely agree with you. I think, you know, going forward, the firms that focus on the customer experience, the client experience, are the ones that are going to have, you know, more referrals coming in. They’re going to have a higher satisfaction of your employees, so they’ll stay around longer. I think, really, that’s the that’s the way the future. I mean, look, if you could even look in the restaurant industry, right? What we’re seeing now is you have high end Michelin star restaurants. A lot of people are foodies. They’re willing to spend the, you know, $500,000 for a plate for one night experience. That’s mind blowing. And then the next day, they go to a fast food joint where there’s not even somebody taking their order. They’re using a touchscreen.

 

Seth Price  26:59  

So what about the middle joint, where there are no more middle joint, but there are pushing back for a second. So when you go to a restaurant, right? This is a 20 to $35 an entree restaurant. So it’s not the five star, it’s not the fast casual. The idea is, are we getting to the point where you’re there, you know, you can order. You’re doing a QR code for the menu. It’s not a far if you have a decent tech interface is ordering yourself where you’re not going to screw it up. You know, that much better. I mean to me, my when a waiter starts not writing down my order, you freak out. No, we only freak out. My wife and I just know it’s not going to be right. We actually play a game as to how much. And we generally ask them, would you mind writing it down? Because we know I see it. It’s literally one item will be wrong in each iteration. It may be small. It may be, you know, they you asked for a Coke, no ice, that didn’t get done. It may be yesterday, app didn’t come out, the entrees did. Like, it’s there. We’re getting to the point like, why are we playing this nonsensical game? You know, again, you’re doing because there’s the interaction you’re going out for that. But the question is, are should we have the waiter come to tell you the specials and do all these things and be that interpersonal? And then you perhaps, actually, you know, again, it’s some that’s the game that we’re trying to figure out is, where is the value and what would be better if the client is doing it themselves?

 

Jay Ruane  28:28  

Well, I agree with you 100% on all that stuff. I mean, where is the value is,

 

Seth Price  28:32  

look at this end of year, end of 2025, we haven’t had an agreement in a long time.

 

Jay Ruane  28:36  

But what I will tell you is I need to get you up here to Connecticut so I can take you a couple of my favorite restaurants, because I don’t get a menu, and the waiter just says, I know what you want. I’ll bring you dinner.

 

Seth Price  28:47  

And Jay that those are special times.

 

Jay Ruane  28:50  

Those are those. Those are the wonderful things when you know the chef comes out and says, Here’s what I made for you this evening, and it’s gonna blow your socks off. And it does. If everybody’s in Connecticut, Ill polio and Shelton. When you walk in, there’s a little plaque with my Ruane family on it, because we eat there all the time. Go in, see Margarita. See, see the whole crew there, and holy heck, you will have one of the best meals

 

Seth Price  29:12  

of your life. And to show you the counter, the counterpoint, I there’s a very cool I just found stumbled upon, 100 feet from my DC office, this cool little Asian concept restaurant. I like seven things on the menu for lunch. But like, as a guy, doesn’t eat pork and this and that, I was like, and it didn’t want deep fried modified two of the dishes for lunch. Waiter, you know, again, the waiter was not best in class. Barely could speak English. I got a check, goes back and creates the dishes. So as much as I love it, and there’s, there’s a time and place for dining with Jay. I want my kids to know, you know, it never hurts to ask, and if you’re, I mean, yeah, I very preface it with, I’m gonna be your highest maintenance customer of the day. But I would love it if I could get this not deep fried. Or would you mind? Changing the protein on this because it would make my day. And when you get those and you said, because to me, that’s all we’re doing with the with business, which is taking something and saying, Hey, everybody’s doing it this way. But if we substituted beef for chicken, how could that be? Would the would the overall piece be more satisfying to you, as opposed and if we’re aching that with our customers, it’s hard to do this as a one off for everybody, but when it’s nominal and you’re able to make those changes, that’s when the magic happens, as I see it, that

 

Jay Ruane  30:32  

absolutely is, and that’s a great way to end it, folks, that’s going to do it for us this year on the law firm blueprint. Thank you for being on this journey with us, and thank you for listening wherever you listen, either you’re watching on the Facebook group or on LinkedIn, or you’re taking us on the go with the podcast. Thank you so much for being with us in 2025 we’ve got great plans for 2026 I think it’s our eighth season at that point. It’s really crazy when you think about it, but we’ve enjoyed being on this journey for you and really just sort of talking about the stuff that’s impacting us as law firm owners. You know, it’s really, you know, this can be a lonely, lonely existence, but having the resources of being able to share it with our listeners, when we see them out and about and talking about the show and talking about how we are dealing with the problems that we face really makes all the difference to us. So thank you for being with us. We really appreciate you being part of this tribe. Seth, I got nothing else. You got anything else? Happy. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to y’all. Bye for now. We’ll see you in 2026 you

 

Seth Price  2:02  

and they’re adding a capital one on top of that. I mean, it’s and what is night? So that the old days of this, this sort of, like, you know, generic, little crappy lounge. It’s like, you know, celebrity chefs. It’s nice, you know, again, for the audience, just top level. if you’re doing the AMEX game and you’re spending money on Google or Facebook, right? A lot of us do LSAs, a lot of us putting Facebook money, Facebook money into ads. If you’re doing that, the gold card, it’s like 400 bucks a year, a little bit less. They got rid of all the other benefits. So it’s hard. It’s like GrubHub, Walmart Plus, could care less. That said there’s some value if you care about it, but not like real cash, but 4x on $150,000 spend. So if you’re at 12,000 a month, that’s one card. I you know, I’m crazy. I have multiple of these, you know. But if you’re able to get every 12,000 increment another business Gold Card is one option. The other thing that’s really cool on the other side is the chase business card that came out that has a 3x multiplier for this same, you know, internet spend. And that’s, you know, Chase points are arguably significantly more valuable than the AMEX points, which are a little hard to spend. they’re not terrible, but it’s not like getting bet, you know, getting to that two cents a point, whereas, if you the chase to Hyatt, not uncommon to see a four to one return. So if you get three to one on your credit, on the internet spend and you also, you know, dining out things like that on some of the chase cards. There’s some, there’s some pretty powerful stuff there. The last thing I’ll throw out there, which is, I’m always looking for like, what’s purely free money. And if you are, if you use Dell at your office, if you spend over $5,150 they literally give you not $1,150 back on a $900 card. So if you know that you’re using Dell, you’re able to get an Amex business platinum, and everything else is gravy. They’re a bunch of other benefits, like some whatever, if it’s indeed, or one of the, you know, one of the different it’s not indeed, it’s one of the other online recruitment tools. But like, once you’ve cash flowed the car with something you’re going to spend anyway, then all the other benefits, like with Amex, having the business Platinum Card gives you a 35% return on certain airlines when you use your points, when you pay money, when you use their portal to pay money, paying with points, it gives you back 35%. so my point is looking at if you fit into any of those macro categories where you know you’re going to spend it, and it just credits everything back to you.

 

Jay Ruane  5:16  

They really do.

 

Seth Price  5:18  

And figuring out where you’re going to spend your points. I’ve gone from being a Marriott’s devalued their program so much that Hyatt is like the old Starwood now within reason, and you get really good deals. We’re off to the andas in Costa Rica, which is on a property with a Ritz and the Four Seasons. It’s, you know, again, it’s value. And as you sort of you know, I am not a I’m pretty frugal when it comes to my own personal spending. And somehow I think I enjoy vacations more when they’re free. Now, could you get your 2% back and just pick your place to go? I’m sure you could. But there’s something about the idea that I probably wouldn’t spend it because it goes in a different bucket. You are much more like, Hey, I’m going to the Ritz. I’m gonna spend the money me. I just can’t do that. I just the idea that a room is $1,500 a night. I still can’t get my arms around. So when it’s points, I’m okay with it. But when it’s money, I have a much harder time.

 

Seth Price  6:24  

that’s what I love about you. 

 

Jay Ruane  6:24  

You know, it’s, it’s interesting. I’m heading over to London, and they were like, Did you mean to book two of these family suites? I’m like, Well, I got six people. And yes, I did. And they’re like, oh, okay, then that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. So one of them’s free, and one of them I got to pay for. But you know, all in all, the trip is mostly points, which is, which is fantastic, because I can just, you know, go for a four day weekend and have a lot of fun with the family and not really have to think about what cash out of pocket. But that brings me to a question I have for you. You know, this is, we are at the end of December, and a lot of people are talking about what their New Year’s resolution is. What’s your New Year’s resolution for your firm?

 

Jay Ruane  7:07  

 Okay, so then, what’s your rock for the year? 

 

Seth Price  7:09  

Exactly, exactly that that I knew what you’re getting, and I was throwing it out there to the audience. Let’s not go with something that’s that we like, we know it like I’m gonna lose weight, we know it’s not gonna happen, or something like that. Okay, so the piece that I, that I have seen within my firm, is keeping, for me, my issue has been keeping attorneys staffed to keep up with the marketing that we’re doing. You have to have the selling units. And you know what? The longer that I live, the more that I see this. I remember there was a guy doing family law claims some crazy number that he was doing in revenue, like at this point, if your fee for service, you can count somebody’s revenue within reason based on the number of lawyers, right? You can only do so much with your time. Again, flat fees, being creative, stacking cases, knowing the system, you can go to a max, but there’s only so much you can go to physically. And I think that same again, there’s exceptions to every rule, but for the non rock stars. There are rock stars that I have that go to, you know, well into the seven figures. But the average person that you’re stacking in volume is only going to be able to do X amount, like. you know, let’s say four to 600,000 for most lawyers that are out there, and if you have X number of lawyers, you know what a firm’s revenue is within reason. And even in PI with exceptions, unless you’re doing super catastrophic stuff where there’s some crazy multipliers. if you’re doing regular auto in most markets, you can generally tell revenue within reason with Attorney count again, exceptions for the you know, a med mal firm can do a lot with a little, but it’s a different piece. So for me, it’s keeping those staffed up. And I think the thing that, if I look back, if I could wave a magic wand in reverse, that I have to be careful of, is that as I’ve grown we’ve added certain internal structure. And it’s about, it’s a back and forth coming out of covid. We were very lean. We wanted redundancy. We’ve talked on the show a million times about how, with some redundancy, if somebody quits, it’s not the end of the world, no biggie. At the same time, that brings down margin. And I think it’s a cat and mouse game. And so if you’re, if you’re if you’re being redundant, and you lose selling units, that’s a really bad combination versus, you know, and History is written by the victor. If you don’t lose any, if you don’t lose any selling units, hey, you can afford that extra margin. But it’s sort of like, it reminds me of law school. You could either not go to class or not do the reading, but you couldn’t do both. You had to do one of those two. And so like, if you can’t, you can’t build the infrastructure for redundancy and extra ops and lose your selling units, because that combination is bad. So what I really want to see is a I want to be smart about the ops expenditures. Is reducing some of those can those redundancies? I say that now I’m going to have an exit, and it’s going to be painful. That said it. That’s the balancing act that we always come back to, which is like Jay saying, What are you? What is you as the owner responsible to jump in for if you’re willing, you know Jay to know that even though you’re out of the court game, that worst case scenario. I mean, it’s talking Mario Godoy. He had a situation like this, where somebody left, he was back in the sausage making. If you’re okay with it, you can keep your margins higher, whereas if you want to sleep at night, knowing that that’s not likely to happen, they will be lower.

 

Jay Ruane  14:27  

That’s exhausting. 

 

Seth Price  14:28  

It’s exhausting, but it made bank, and they incentivize people accordingly. Now I’m guessing that when they when something broke, it didn’t go the full 30 minutes if they knew they weren’t gonna help somebody. But the idea that you’re questioning what you’re doing. I had people, I had all my intake, people having the ability to sell a family law consultation, which was really just offering it, rather than saying, You know what? This is, moving that more into a sales component, even though it’s. Out of $5,000 retainer, it’s going to get to them, but we’re selling that consultation hard and like, again, it’s just one step better, and not beating yourself up, because, oh my god, imagine if I had done that sooner, but with all these things you’re doing, Well, imagine when you fix or tweak those particular things.

 

Seth Price  15:26  

What do you mean by that?

 

Seth Price  15:44  

Oh, I see what you’re saying on that. 

 

Jay Ruane  15:45  

And when we were getting people in the afternoons, they were more likely to close. And so our closing ratio went up. So now we are doing less outreach, getting more returns for the time that we’re putting in, and we’re able to repurpose that time into other new leads that are coming in without having to add more staff. So net revenue was up to me, right?

 

Seth Price  19:18  

I know you say that, but that like we actually, we held ground on that, but I have not, I’ve not held ground on time tracking software for BluShark, that culture was not to have it, and that they people get their work done. And I’m like, great, if your KPIs are good enough. In theory, that works. But there are pieces where it’s just out of sight, out of mind. I want people to be part of it. And let me ask you this. I’m seeing more and more of this for people that work remotely or hybrid. There’s, you know, people are now globe trotting, traveling around the country this and, you know, visiting family, which I think is hugely problematic. again, pre covid, work from home, dedicated office, child care. it was a job. It was now it seems like, you know, I’m an Airbnb with my laptop, and again, younger generation. better, I think, at multitasking these things, but it still can’t be ideal. And the question is, of what’s measured. Great. How much stuff do we this is the piece I want to ask you about KPIs. The more that Mr. Systems put the puts them in place, the better. Is it like sales, where everything you measure or everything you incentivize gets pushed and done more? Are we at a point where, like the KPIs? Yeah, that’s what makes you money. But are there pieces that we are too small to have perfect KPIs, and that even though you’re getting certain check boxes at top level and maybe get your revenue, get your revenue, but if you’re getting your revenue, but the client is getting slightly less great customer service, you’re still getting like, Are There pieces that we are not sophisticated enough to measure which breaks because you’re not doing it in a certain way.