While RJon is away, Team RJon's gonna play.
We're here to bring you our favorite actionable insights and
content from RJon's newest
book Profit First For Lawyers.
Profit First For Lawyers is going to accelerate your law firm's
growth so that you can profit in every area of your life, not just
financially.
Team RJon is also gonna
be sharing what it's really like to
work with RJon Robins behind
the scenes.
So put your BS aside for the next few minutes and put yourself, your family,
your firm, and your profit first.
Welcome back to the Profit First For Lawyers podcast.
I'm
your host, Karli, and today
we're talking about, "Stop getting paid in compliments."
In other words, A.R., in other words, holding firm to our boundaries.
And what's happening
here is that RJon is teaching
another one of his coaching sessions.
And we're talking about how sometimes it can actually make our clients
feel uncomfortable if we are giving them what we promised, but if
we're not expecting them to give us what they promised in return.
Or in other words, if our A.R.
is getting a little bit out of control.
So I'm gonna go ahead and give the
floor to RJon.
This is something
that he's gonna talk about pretty in depth in chapter 14 of the book, but I feel like
this is a really good precursor to that.
When we give a dog food, give the dog a treat, we think
we're showing the dog love.
We think we're showing the dog generosity.
We think we're showing the dog an abundance.
But in dog language, what the dog interprets that as is weakness.
Because no alpha dog
gives a non-alpha dog food except out of weakness.
This is just dog language.
When a lawyer doesn't charge for a service.
When a lawyer does work and they are owed money.
And they don't make sure that they protect themselves to get their money.
We, in lawyer language, might think this is a sign of generosity and strength and
abundance and all that kind of good stuff.
And I'm not talking about pro bono and I'm not talking about when you
say to the client upfront, I will do this for you for free because...
I'm talking about when you had an agreement that you were going to
provide a service to the client.
You provided the service and the client was supposed to pay you for the
service, and then you just don't make sure you get paid for the service.
You don't protect yourself.
To the client, what the client hears is not what you might
think you're saying as a lawyer.
What the client hears is weakness.
The client doesn't think, "Oh, I really appreciate this lawyer for not
standing up for themself and looking out for themself by walking away
from the money that's owed to them."
What the client perceives is,
"Wow, this lawyer doesn't value themself.
And this lawyer doesn't respect themself.
And this lawyer doesn't have enough courage and strength to protect themself."
And then what the client perceives is, "And so maybe they won't really
be able to protect me either."
And so you actually begin to lose the respect and trust of your clients
when you allow accounts receivables to sit out there and you don't collect.
First of all, if you allow accounts receivables in the
first place, because you should
have zero accounts receivables.
How much accounts receivables should you have in a law firm?
The answer is zero.
If you know how to use your client property trust account the right way, you
should have zero accounts receivables.
Now, as a practical matter, we all make mistakes, myself included,
and you wind up with some accounts receivables here and there.
But to the extent that you don't take steps to protect yourself
in the first place, to avoid the accounts receivables, and to the
extent that you don't take steps to go after the accounts receivables,
to protect yourself, to protect your family, to protect your staff, and
even to protect your other clients.
That is perceived by the clients who owe you the money as being a sign of weakness.
Which is why they don't refer the best business to you.
Which is why they don't entrust you with their most important matters.
I really love this clip, and I'll tell you why, because I think
that I am definitely the kind of
person that RJon was talking
to here.
As far as working for compliments and not holding myself accountable
and holding other people accountable to the things that I asked of them.
I think it is a
mind-changing, game-changing
thought process to
think that by trying to be so nice, for so many years, right?
That I actually wasn't being very kind to the people that I was interacting
with or that I was trying to hold
boundaries with.
I love this mindset shift.
You are actually
doing the most kind thing, the most valuable thing, to hold people
accountable to the things that they said that they'll do for you.
That's actually very kind.
That's something that people crave even if they tell you that they don't.
All right, we're gonna end the show today with a little special clip.
This is one of our
members, Todd Wesche, who had
an advanced reader copy of Profit First For
Lawyers, RJon's newest
book that will be coming to a bookstore near you in July.
And this is what Todd had to say when he was done
reading.
My name's Todd Wesche.
I'm the
managing
member of Vetus Legal, LLC.
We help
veterans of the United States
military and their dependents
and survivors obtain benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs that
they have earned and that they deserve.
The reason why I want to do these interviews is because the
principles in Profit First are life changing in many respects.
And it's not gonna be like a religious experience or anything like that,
but it's amazing how some very simple tools, some very simple changes
of the way you approach money.
How you approach your finances.
How you approach the way you keep records of things.
And the way you allocate your resources can make a huge difference in the way
that you see the money on the other end.
By that I mean, just a small change of paying yourself first as a business
owner and even in your personal life can basically put you in a mindset of
ensuring that you're being rewarded for the work that you put into
whatever you're trying to accomplish.
Whether it be a small business owner or just
trying to take control of
your own personal finances.
The principals work the same either way.
So ideas like ensuring that you take X percent off of the top of
your W2 income and making sure that you put that aside for yourself and
whatever special things that you want.
Means that you're gonna live off of the remaining percentages.
And those numbers will
ensure or
help to ensure that you know, you are able to live the life you want to live
because you're making sure you put the money aside first to allow that to happen.
Thanks so much for tuning into this episode.
Be sure to tune in next week as we talk about the difference between
fixing a problem and solving a problem.
I'm gonna be joined in the studio by another
member of Team RJon, and you're
not gonna wanna miss this one.
So please subscribe, tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues,
and go to www.ProfitFirstForLawyers.com
to order your copy of the book
Profit First For Lawyers.
Thanks so much you guys.
My name is Karli and on behalf of Team RJon, thanks for
watching.
We'll see you next time.