While RJon was away Team RJon came to play.
Well the cat's out of the bag now, folks.
But we're still here bringing you our favorite, and most importantly,
actionable insights to RJon's newest book, Profit First for Lawyers.
We're going to help you accelerate your law firm's growth so that
you can experience more profit in every aspect of your life.
We're also going to be providing some behind the scenes footage at what it's
really like to work with RJon Robins.
So, put your B.S.
Aside for the next few minutes and put yourself, your family,
your firm, and your profit first.
Well, hey there folks, did you miss us?
Well, welcome back to the Profit First for Lawyers podcast.
I'm your host, Karli, and you're in luck because today I'm here to
share two very exciting things.
First up, a very special announcement.
Drum roll, please!
Profit First for Lawyers is coming back with a season two!
That's right folks, even more great content will be coming your way very soon.
We're going to continue bringing you the actionable insights that you've
been looking forward to that will make your law firm more profitable.
So hit that button to like and subscribe and be prepared for new episodes soon.
And secondly, we didn't want to leave you hanging while you wait for new episodes.
So today, I'm kicking off a special bonus two part series for you based
on an interview that RJon gave when he was invited to be a guest
on The Managing Partners Podcast.
This interview was so packed full of great information, delivered only in
that special way that RJon can, that it was split up into two highly profitable,
actionable, insightful episodes that will help your law firm be more profitable.
So here's part one.
In this episode, you're going to learn some marketing tips that will help
you to identify your ideal avatar.
You're going to learn why you should stop thinking of yourself as a lawyer and start
thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur who happens to sell legal services.
And you're going to hear RJon get pretty fired up about why you
have an ethical responsibility to run a profitable law firm.
This is a really good one, folks.
So hang on to your hats and prepare for a ride.
Let's roll the clip.
All right.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to another episode of The Managing Partners Podcast.
This is Kevin Daisey here, always trying to bring you the best
guests and best information.
And today, I have the all famous RJon Robins on the show.
RJon, welcome.
Hey, Kevin.
How are you?
I've listened to the show for a while here.
I'm glad to finally be on.
Thank you for having me.
Well, you know, we had to pull some strings, but, we
were able to get you a spot.
So, I go where my team tells me to go.
I do what my team tells me to do.
I appreciate it.
So, everyone, tune it in.
Attorneys.
If you don't know RJon, I'd be shocked.
I like to pretend as if you may not.
So I want to have RJon give a little bit of a background on
himself, where he is now and what he's up to and how he got there.
So I always like a good story.
And so, we'll start with that.
One second before that, RJon.
You can go to HowToManage.Com.
If you're listening on audio, it's HowToManage.Com.
You can see RJon's companies.
And check him out and we'll get into more of that in just a
moment and dive deep into how he helps law firms grow in scale.
So RJon give us a little background yourself, sir
Uh, well how far back do you want me to go?
I'll tell you today, How to MANAGE a Small Law Firm, we manage almost 700
of the fastest growing most profitable law firms that anyone will probably
ever see, hear of, or imagine.
The biggest challenge we have in marketing is people don't actually believe that
what we do regularly is possible.
But 10 years ago I was flat broke.
And, I think it's important.
I like to tell both bookends of that story.
Because, I like to tell people that, like, literally, if I could do this,
if I could, go from being flat broke in 2008, 2009 to, you know, Inc.
$5,000 9 years in a row, $30 plus billion dollars in revenue, I mean, like anyone
can do this, it's, anyone can build a million dollar law firm in about 36
to 48 months, literally from scratch.
Regardless of practice area, regardless of what market you're in.
I mean, there might be some bizarre, weird, you're living
in the middle of Alaska with nothing around you, but reindeer.
And, you know, even now with the internet, you can still do it.
The point I'm trying to make is I don't think people really
care that much about me.
I think people care about what, How To MANAGE can do for them.
And so if you want me to tell you all about me, I'll be happy to, you
know, indulge and tell you all about.
Myself, but I just think it's probably more important for the audience to know
what, How To MANAGE can do for them.
A lot of what we can do for them and a lot of what we will do for them.
We can do for free and we will do for free.
We have an app that they can download for free.
All kinds of resources because we don't need to hide anything.
You want me to tell you about me?
I mean, you want to know where I grew up?
I grew up in Miami.
Well, I will say this.
I have a dog.
His name is peanut.
Well,
I appreciate that.
And I think, you know, I'd rather focus on How To MANAGE, and what you
do and how you can help these folks.
And that's what the show is all about.
And so just to kind of back up and give my perspective, so I'm in law
firm marketing, so we're literally trying to help law firms grow,
but we're on the outside, right?
So we're not able to control operational things.
We're not able to control their sales processes.
We're not able to make them profitable necessarily.
So, but what I do see, and so I have, I have a sheet.
So if a law firm calls me like, 'Hey, we're interested to talk.'
I interviewed them and I have about 40 questions that I asked them.
"What is your revenue?"
"What's your average client worth?"
what is- "How many leads are you getting right now from different sources?"
"What is your current agency engagement look like?
Have you had multiple agencies?"
I just, we asked a ton of questions and I don't show them anything.
I don't share anything.
I don't walk them through a slide deck.
It's the interview.
It's a "Are we a fit for you?"
"Do we feel like we can help you?"
And "Are you in the right place with your business to be able to hire
us and have a good relationship?"
And so, What I'm getting at is...
if those questions that they just pull them off the top of their heads,
like they have financial reports that morning, I know, and I'll say, 'Hey,
are you part of any organizations like a mastermind or a group?'
And they're like, 'How To MANAGE'.
And so I can pick them out of a group now very quickly just because
the way they carry themselves, the things they're thinking about and
every How To MANAGE member that's a client of mine or a prospect.
knows their numbers.
They know everything off the top of their head.
And most business owners don't have a clue about any of that stuff and
how it affects their, their business.
So the testament to you all that if, if I see a How To MANAGE member, I already
know they are a How To MANAGE member just by having a conversation with them.
And so whatever y'all have done and the systems you put in place
and the help you, you put in place.
Is very obvious
when I-
I'll tell you what we do.
And, and I'm happy to share this with your audience and I'm
happy to share this with anyone.
And I've been sharing the same thing.
I've been standing on some soap boxes, preaching this stuff for 20 years now.
You know, I started off, I was being a little facetious earlier about no
one really cares about me, but let me give it just a smidge of background.
Bringing it back!
Well, just a little bit, just because I think it gives some context.
I went to law school.
Basically because I didn't know what else to do.
Cause I was just a total fuck up 23 year old who majored in
partying and girls in college.
I just needed a place to hide out.
So I went to law school.
When I graduated from law school, I, started my own law firm.
I worked for a federal bankruptcy judge for a little while, and
then I started my own law firm.
And it was a disaster.
I didn't know anything about marketing.
I didn't know anything about sales.
I didn't know anything about production, workflow processes,
systems, procedures, standardization.
I didn't know anything about hiring, training, managing,
making a profit with people.
I didn't know anything about financial controls.
I didn't know anything about physical plant.
And I didn't understand that a law firm is a business, right?
Part of the way that I grew my business, this might shock you as a digital
marketer, but I originally built my business, How to MANAGE a Small Law
Firm after I was broke, I had no money.
I had no resources.
So I just went and got in front of audiences.
And I got together with local bar associations all over the country
and I would stand in front of these audiences and I would talk about
the business, I'm running a law firm.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me back up.
So I have my own law firm.
It was a disaster.
It was losing money.
It was making me miserable.
I was stressed out.
I didn't see any hope.
And then I discovered that the Florida Bar had a department called the Law
Office Management Assistance Service.
And the Law Office Management Assistance Service was created back in 1980 when
the president of the Florida Bar at the time, a guy by the name of Sam Smith,
he realized that the bar was prosecuting more lawyers because of law firm
management problems than any other reason.
54 percent of bar grievances filed nationally, by the way, and, not
coincidentally, 54 percent of malpractice actions filed nationally.
start off as a avoidable law firm management problem.
The owner of the law firm doesn't really think of it like a business and so
they don't treat it like a business.
And so they don't put the processes and the systems and the procedures in
place for it to run like a business.
And so it runs over them and, you know, makes their life miserable
and creates all kinds of problems.
So there I was running my law practice.
And it was making me miserable.
And I discovered the Florida bar had the law office management assistance service,
and I called them for help and I told them the problems that I was having and they
were able to very quickly and very easily.
I thought I was some special snowflake with some special problems and no.
Well, you are.
You are.
No, I'm not.
It's, listen, I can't remember the last time someone brought me a new,
interesting, novel, unique law firm management problem that I hadn't
seen at least a hundred times before.
And that's good news that no one wants to be the person
they named the disease after.
Right?
What you want to do is you want to go to the doctor and you want the
doctor to say, 'Oh, don't worry.
We've seen this hundreds of times before.' 'We know exactly what to do.'
'You'll be back on your feet in no time.'
'Don't worry about it.' Right?
That's the rational thing.
So they said, 'look, the problems you're describing are effects.' They didn't
say it in exactly these terms, but 'The problems you're having are effects.'
'These effects are caused by certain actions or inactions.' 'And if you'll
change these actions, the effects will get better and take care of themselves.'
And so I did what they said to do.
Things got better.
I called them back and I said, 'Here's my next problem.' And they
told me what to do and I did it.
Things got better.
And I called and said, 'Hey, I, now I have a new problem!' 'Cause the solution
to the old problem created a new and better problem.' 'What do I do now?'
Anyway, this went on for months.
And my law firm started to turn around and start to work for me instead of
me having to work for my law firm.
And I said to J.
R.
Phelps, who was the director of the Florida Bar Law Office
Management Assistance Service at the time, I said, 'Hey, listen.
I'm having a lot more fun with the business side of my law firm
than even the practice of law.'
And to make a very, very, very long story short, he ended up recruiting me
and I became the first and still today, the only lawyer in the history of the
state of Florida to serve as a full time Small Law Firm Management Advisor.
And so I was there for almost four years.
And it's a documented fact that during that time I worked with over
9,000 law firms on every aspect of starting marketing, managing,
buying, selling, you name it.
If there's a way to screw up the way a law firm runs, we've seen it,
right?, and it's not like 'I'm so smart.' I'm not like coming out, this
is saying 'I'm smart and you're stupid!
And that's why I know how to fix your problem.' No, it's just, I've seen it over
and over and over and over and over again.
Right?
And what you're saying too,
It's not just like anomaly.
It's like, it's, you know, the problems that they're the same for every law firm.
Look, if you go to the store and you buy one of those boxes to make a cake, right.
And you follow the instructions on the box.
And you put in the egg and you put in the milk and you put in the water and
you, you mix it up the way they say to mix it up and you put it in the right
size pan that they say to put it in and you stick it in the preheated oven and
the right temperature that they say to preheat the oven and you leave it in the
oven at the right amount of time that they say to leave it in the oven for.
Are you surprised when a cake comes out at the end?
Is it like,
'Oh my God, how did that happen?' It's engineered.
Look, law firms are very simple businesses to run.
That breaks the heart of thousands of lawyers right now listening to this.
Law firms are very simple businesses to run compared to an HVAC company,
compared to a moving company, compared to a restaurant, compared to a shoe
store, compared to any of these other kinds of businesses that, if we're
all being honest with ourselves, we know most lawyers look down on the
people that own those businesses.
'Oh, look at me.
I'm special.
I own a law firm.' Yeah, their businesses are more complicated to run than yours is.
Law firms are very easy to run.
I'm sorry?
Yeah.
I said supply chain, equipment, all kinds of other...
Oh my god.
There's so many more moving parts.
A law firm, let's start off with, let's start off with barriers to entry.
There's way more barriers to entry to start a restaurant or an HVAC
company or a shoe store than there are barriers to entry to start a law firm.
Right?
Working capital.
You need way more working capital to start and to continue running
and growing an HVAC company, a restaurant, a shoe store, a...
You name it, any other kind of a business practically than a law firm.
Staffing complexities, right?
The risks you run running a moving company, the risks you run running a
plumbing company that goes in and fixes people's plumbing toilets in their house,
the risks you run running a restaurant are way more dangerous and way more risky
than the risks you run running a law firm.
The profit margins of a law firm are when it's run even badly.
When you run a law firm, even badly, the profit margins are so much higher
than the profit margins of almost any other kind of a business you can imagine
that you can actually afford to run your business really badly with a law firm,
and still you get by, which is why more lawyers think that they're doing okay.
Anyway, the point I'm making is, law firms are very simple businesses to run.
You put the right things in place, you keep the right things maintained
and going, you get amazing results.
you don't put the right things in place or you put them in place and
then you neglect them, you're going to get predictably bad results.
And you know, this is why I say it's like, I'm not a genius.
My- we've got an amazing team of professional law firm management
advisors, CEOs who come in and they provide CEO services and COO services
and CFO services and CMO services for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
small law firms all over the country.
We're not geniuses.
We just, it's just not that complicated if you know how to do it.
And if you keep doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it, doing it day after
day, after day, after day, after day, after day, after, which is why lawyers
don't do it because it gets boring.
We do the boring stuff.
No, I mean, you're spot on.
And, you know, it's, I do have guests on the show here that, you
know, they run as a business, they fall in love with the business side.
And I've had other, a lot of folks I've talked to that I've had a guest
or prospects that don't show up because they're tied to their desk.
They've had the law firm for 30 years.
They have an admin assistant.
And they're in court or running around like crazy and they- there's, I don't
know if there's anyone that can help them at that point, but they're just
completely working six days a week,
tied to their desk, not scaling.
We help hundreds of people like that every single year.
Yeah.
And I try to
refer them to you, to be
honest with you.
Those aren't like, those aren't like our favorite kind of people
to work with, but we do help them hundreds of them every kind of year.
Our favorite kind of person.
Look, people come to us, people come to How To MANAGE in two states, right?
They come to us in a state of inspiration.
They come to us in a state of desperation.
It's much more fun to work with someone who's coming to you inspired
because they've had a taste of success and they know what's possible.
And they're like, 'Help me, help me, help me squeeze everything I can
out of this thing and use it to give myself and my family a better life.'
And of course we also work with people who are desperate and they're like,
'I can't keep doing this anymore.
I don't know what to do.
I don't see light at the end of the tunnel.
Just help me.' Either way.
Yeah.
The worst people to work with are those ambivalent people in the middle, which
by the way, there's a piece of marketing advice for every lawyer listening to
the podcast or watching the podcast.
Your ideal clients are probably coming to you in a state of
inspiration or a state of desperation.
The ambivalent people in the middle will suck the profits out of your
law firm and make you miserable.
Yep, 100%.
And that's the same for my kind of client.
Like, it's hard for me to help someone in desperation, even though you want to, but
this might not be possible for us to do.
You can help them.
Why can't you help them in desperation?
Kevin, you can 100 percent help someone in a state of desperation.
If they're really desperate.
I think the problem is they say they're desperate, but
they're not really desperate.
See, a desperate person is willing to heed the advice.
What we call TayeAstuya.
TayeAstuya means Take All Your Excuses And Shove Them Up Your Ass.
Just fucking do this.
Let it work for you.
A person who is not desperate enough.
What they're going to do is they're going to say, 'Well,
explain to me how this works.' You don't need to know how it works.
I mean, do you know how the anti lag brake system on your car works?
No, you do not, right?
You do not know how the brakes in your car work.
And yet you get in your car every day with your family and you drive and you
expect them to stop and you rely on them.
Do you know how the lights work in your house?
No, you flip the switch and the lights go on.
There's a million things in your life you depend on for your life.
And you don't have a clue how it works
and you don't need to.
You don't need to!
You need to know that it works and you need to know that if it
doesn't work, it's not really going to do you any damage, right?
So you do a small test.
And you get a little result and it works and then you reinvest a little
bit of time and energy and faith and hope and trust and belief and some
money and then it works a little bit better and so you reinvest and it works
a little bit better and you reinvest and it works a little bit better.
You can help desperate people.
I think that you, I think that when someone says they're desperate and
they give you all those excuses, they're not really desperate.
Yeah, they become harder to work with, I think, in that state, that
state of mind that they're in.
Well, that's the key to all of this is, you know, really, if you boil
it all down, How to MANAGE a Small Law Firm is primarily a personal
development business for entrepreneurs who happen to own law firms.
And that I think is really what sets us apart.
And I'm pretty sure that, you know, I guess we'll take bets on how long
it takes before a bunch of people are out there saying that 'They're
doing, mindset work or personal development for entrepreneurs.' Right?
But, That's what we do.
We've always been a personal development business for
entrepreneurs who own law firms.
And then we come in and we put in the marketing, the marketing systems and the
sales systems and the operational systems and the staffing systems and the financial
control systems and the dashboard.
So you can track and know what's going on in your business, you know, so to help
you go away for 30 days with emergency access only, which is really what we try
to achieve with our, with our members.
But, really it's all about mindset
because if you know-.
How many lawyers working right now, would like to, disappear for 30 days and
totally doable.
And your law firm still runs
100 percent totally doable.
You can, you can take the worst shit show imaginable and you can get to
the place where you can be away for 30 days with emergency access only.
And while you're away.
The marketing's still working.
Sales is still converting prospective clients into paying clients.
The work's still getting produced.
You're still got revenue coming in.
The bills are still getting paid.
The staff is still being, managed and controlled.
The firm is still profitable.
Clients are still being served.
Clients are happy.
And you get a dashboard while you're away to know that everything's
working the way it should be working.
And that's why we say 'Away with emergency access only.' And if there's an emergency,
you'll know there's an emergency.
You get up off the beach, you go to the business center, you solve the
emergency, you go back to your family.
Or, you know, a lot of our members, what they do is they take that 30
days off with emergency access only and they work on the business for a
month and then, bam, take it to the next level and that's really fun, too.
Well, a good example.
You were just in Paris for how long?
I was, I was gone for that whole trip for 45 days.
About a month of it was Paris.
Sure.
Then we went to California.
Yeah, but, how many emergencies did you have to respond to or?
I know you were working on the business.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
Emergencies?
None.
And by the way, that trip, there were no emergencies.
I don't want to pretend like I don't have to.
Listen, I was in the jungle.
I knew you went on that trip and I know, you know, there's proof
that, you know, you can go away.
You can get this to happen.
It can work.
Oh, I only work in my business about 90 days a year.
The rest of the time my business is running for me.
without me except on an emergency basis.
If there's an emergency, I step back in.
Got it.
Yeah.
So how many folks listening would like to, to be at that point?
Right.
So,
you know, you know who my favorite people to work with are?
My favorite, favorite, favorite people to work with are.
Expectant first time moms.
I love working with expectant first time moms.
They come to us and they're like, 'I just got pregnant in nine months.
I got to take a real maternity leave.' They are ready to take all their
excuses, shove them up, shove them up their ass and just get it done.
And in nine months, bam, we can make things happen.
Those are my favorite people to work with because they don't make excuses.
They had a real strong, powerful motivation to get it done.
They got a timeline, right?
They gotta, they gotta meet it.
So.
Yeah.
That's a good, that's interesting.
That makes sense to me.
Yeah, a kid, having a kid will smack you in the face real quick.
So,
absolutely.
So, what,
You know, actually, so with How To MANAGE, you know, we have a lot of
clients, I was telling RJon, we have a lot of clients that are members and,
um, and they hold our feet to the fire.
They're, you know, they got their shit together.
And we've worked with a lot of your CFOs, CEOs, CMOs.
directly, on calls with our clients.
And so, you know, How To MANAGE has got these expert people sitting there
with this, with you as a lawyer, a law firm, looking over these things
and walking you through the process and putting these things in place.
So it's not just, a DIY type of situation here.
And we do have DIY solutions also, but I just want to say, you
know, because you're nice enough to have me on your podcast.
So I'll give you a plug, which by the way, Kevin did not ask me to say this,
but I will, you know, if the report that I got back from our CEOs and
our CFOs and our CMOs was that 'Array sucks!' I would not have accepted
the invitation to be on the podcast.
Well, I appreciate that.
I really do.
Well, cause we get a lot of invitations and the first thing
I do is I talk to my team.
I'm like, 'What do you know about this company?' And they're
like, 'Oh no, don't go there.'
Yeah.
Cause it's almost like you're, you're somewhat promoting for some reason.
Yeah.
And I don't associate with people who don't do good work.
I appreciate that.
And, and that means a lot.
I really appreciate that.
And, you know, but again, you know, How To MANAGE we, when we have a member of
this, How To MANAGE, we know it, I know it before they even walk in the door and, uh,
they just carry themselves differently.
Again, they know their numbers, they know everything.
It's like they've been trained, you know, they're just a totally different person.
They have been trained.
You know, James Grant, out of Georgia.
Uh huh.
He's a member.
He's,
I know Jimmy Grant.
Yeah.
Jimmy.
He was on,
I don't know all of our members, but I know Jimmy,
I wouldn't expect you to know all of them.
But Jimmy, what an awesome story he's got.
And, he's so he's dialed into it and, he's got a unique business
model, doing some really cool things.
And, and he's like, man, he's like, 'I'm not, I wasn't smart.
I didn't do well in school.' He's.
He's like, 'I don't even deserve to be where I'm at.' He's running
a law firm like a business.
He does deserve to be where he's at!
That's the thing.
You deserve to be where you're at.
Yeah, but you deserve to be where you're at.
If you do...
Successful law firms are successful because the owners of successful
law firms do the things that cause law firms to be successful.
Unsuccessful law firms are unsuccessful because the owners of unsuccessful law
firms either refuse to do the things that successful law firm owners do Or
they do a bunch of dumb shit that causes their law firms to remain unsuccessful.
Having a successful law firm has nothing to do with where you went to law school.
It has nothing to do with how hard you work.
It has nothing to do with how smart you are.
It has nothing to do with, you know, whether you were, the right race
or the right- came from the right place, or you love a certain way, or.
It's got nothing to do with any of this stuff.
It's very, very, very mechanical.
And this breaks the heart of thousands and thousands of lawyers when they hear this.
It's very-.
I love it!
That's awesome right there.
That is just the best thing I've heard all day.
That is a hundred percent like that's it.
And I think a lot of these lawyers are like, 'well, just do good work, put your
head down and the law firm will prosper.'
That's not what causes law firms to be successful.
So I told you, I built my business originally.
So I was with the Florida bar.
I had worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of law firm owners.
I mean, it's a documented fact in bar records.
I was something of a well known authority in a very small world
of small law firm management.
I, then, then my wife got sick and.
Because I had failed to follow my own advice about creating processes and
systems and procedures and all the stuff we teach our members to do now and help
our members to do now, because I'd failed to follow my own advice when Ale got
sick, my whole practice fell apart like really fast and we lost our house to
foreclosure and you know, we went broke.
And, I mean, it was bad.
Like I literally was scraping up money to buy groceries some weeks,
and that's not an exaggeration.
And it's because I didn't do the things that owners of successful businesses do.
And I did the things that owners of unsuccessful businesses do.
And, then I went out and I got on the national CLE speaking tour.
So Microsoft, LexisNexis, LawPay, Ruby Receptionist, they sponsored
this national speaking tour.
I went on the road and basically taught thousands and thousands and thousands
of lawyers with local bar associations and law schools about the business
of running a successful law firm.
And...
I forgot where I was going with this.
I had a point.
I totally forgot my point.
You said something.
Well, you
basically, I think we're, we were talking about, well, I was talking about
Jimmy Grant and, being smart enough or,
What was I talking about?
This is how they know the show's.
Not scripted
. This is not scripted!
Because I totally,
I'll bring, I'll bring in An actor.
I was gonna make a really good point too.
It was gonna,
oh, you lost everything.
Now I remember!
Now I remember.
So I was on the, so I was so, I was, you gotta put that down.
It's distracting the shit outta me.
I'm sorry.
You can go do it outside, but doing it there.
My tech guy who set up all the lights and everything.
He's sitting there watching, which is fine, but he's like checking his phone.
It's like distracting the shit out of it.
This is all
part of the script!
I promise.
I had an assistant years ago and she would take notes on her phone.
She's a, what I refer to as a fucking millennial.
And she would take notes on her phone and it would drive me insane.
Cause I'm old school, right?
I'm 52 years old.
So, and she'd be like, 'Look I'm taking notes.
I'm taking notes.
This is all business.
I'm not checking my email or text or whatever.' And I'm like, 'I know, but
you gotta-.' It just drives me crazy.
Anyway,
that's why I
want to do interviews with, uh, with attorneys that are prospects,
because if, if I'm on my phone on a video call with you, you'd be
like, 'What the hell are you doing?'
Right.
I'm taking notes for real.
This is a pet peeve of mine.
And, and it's ironic because one of my biggest pet peeves
are people who have pet peeves.
But anyway, the point I'm making, I remember, I remember
the point of the story.
The story was, I used to go and I'd be in front of, you know, lawyers,
like a hundred lawyers at a time in the National CLE Speaking Tour.
And I asked them a question.
And the question is, "What's the business of a law firm?"
And I was in front of thousands of lawyers over the couple of years that I
was doing the National CLE Speaking Tour.
After I only got like 23 correct answers, thousands of lawyers,
only 23 correct answers.
Nowadays I get correct answers all the time because people watch my
videos, but there was a time where like no one ever heard of me and
I only got 23 correct answers.
"What's the business of a law firm?"
And the problem is lawyers confuse the job of a lawyer
with the business of a law firm.
And, and I say, okay, well, and they say, 'Well, the business of a law firm
is to protect people's rights.' 'The business of a law firm is to enforce the
law.' 'The business of a law firm is to help people with their legal problems.'
'The business of a law firm is to make clients happy.' 'The business of a law
firm is to...' Someone would always be a smart one, and 'The business of a
law firm is to make money.' No, that's not the business of a law firm either.
And I say, 'Well, what's the business of a restaurant?
What's the business of a, of a hotel?'
The business of a hotel is to rent rooms, the Ritz Carlton and the
motel six, they're in the same business because they're both in
the business of renting rooms.
Now, the Ritz Carlton uses one strategy and the motel six uses
a different strategy, but they're both in the same business, right?
Did we rent more rooms?
At a lower cost of rent of acquisition and a lower cost of goods sold to
deliver the service, the business was more profitable, right?
What's the business of a restaurant?
The business of a restaurant is not to serve food.
I serve food at my house all the time.
That doesn't make me a restaurant.
The business of a restaurant is to sell food.
That's the business of a restaurant.
Ruth's Chris Steak House, McDonald's, both in the same business, right?
They're both in the business of selling food.
They have different strategies.
They serve a different avatar.
Different processes.
Different processes, different product, but still the same business, right?
If you went to the owner of a Ruth's Chris Steak House and you said,
'Listen, if you'll install plastic tables and chairs and bolt them to
the floor and put a play pan out back.
You'll sell more $100 stakes.
That's something maybe we should consider, right?' But it's
a different business model.
So the problem is most lawyers who, by the way.
In to let everyone off the hook.
You know, I went to law school too, and they didn't teach me
anything in law school about the business of running a law firm.
They didn't teach me how to market legal services.
They didn't teach me how to sell legal services.
They didn't teach me how to sit down and document processes and systems and
procedures so that my law firm could efficiently, consistently, predictably,
profitably, and professionally deliver a high quality work product.
Even when I'm not there.
Because I'm on away for emergency access only.
They didn't teach me how to hire, train, manage, and make a profit with staff.
Even if I took, I didn't happen to take, but even if I took employment law classes,
they don't teach you that in employment law classes on how to hire, train, and
manage and make a profit with staff.
They didn't teach me financial controls.
They don't teach us in law school about the business of running a law,
the business of running a law firm.
Law school is a trade school.
Law school teaches you the trade.
They teach you how to do the job of a lawyer to work for the owner of a law
firm who runs the business of a law firm.
So the business,
right?
It's the trade,
the business of the world,
You learn how to weld, not to run a
welding company.
I'm sorry.
Say again.
I'll say it's just like if you're, you were taught how to weld, right?
You learn the trade of welding.
It doesn't mean you know how to run a welding company, right?
So.
Exactly.
Welding was going to be my next example.
That was part of
the script I have right here.
So.
Yeah.
Welding.
Make sure we talk about welding.
So, um, I'm laughing because I actually do know how to weld.
I actually want to get a welder and I build stuff all the time and that's
the next thing on my list as well.
So.
After the podcast is over, let's get on a zoom and I'll take you into my basement.
I have a whole, I used to sculpt with scrap metal.
And I have, and with, with a, with a, with a TIG welder.
And then I used to blow up.
Yeah.
And a blowtorch.
Well, you're going to
save that for another episode, uh, welding with RJon.
In my bookshelf here somewhere, I've got like all my welding books, but
anyway, the point I'm getting at here is the business of a law firm is not
the same thing as the job of a lawyer.
And this is really how we're able to transform the performance so
quickly is because we change the mindset of the owner of the law firm.
And, and most of our members, if you talk to them, If they've been
with us for any length of time.
And I'm sure if you ask Jimmy, you say, 'What do you do?' And they're going
to say, 'I'm an entrepreneur,' right?
I'm an entrepreneur and I own a business and the business that
I own happens to be a law firm.
The business of a law firm for everyone who's listening.
So I don't want to leave you on a cliffhanger and hide this.
The business of a law, the business of a law firm is to sell, deliver
and get paid for legal services.
The business of a restaurant is to sell food.
The business of a rest of a hotel is to rent rooms.
The business of a law firm is to sell legal services and deliver.
Obviously that's the business of the law firm to do that.
The owner of the restaurant needs to hire a chef.
Or maybe a cook to do that.
The owner of the hotel needs to hire a desk clerk.
They need to hire a maintenance person.
They need to hire a housekeeping staff.
The owner of the law firm has to hire a lawyer to work for the law firm to sit in
the kitchen cooking up the services that get sold by the server in front of house.
I'm obviously mixing up analogies to make the point here.
I love it.
And the sooner that everyone listening to this podcast can
stop thinking of yourself.
As a lawyer and start thinking of yourself as being the owner of a business that
sells legal services, shift your mindset.
The sooner your law firm, I promise you, will start to be more profitable and
start to work for you instead of you having to keep working for your law firm.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And here's one of the biggest things that I see, with issues or, or mindset
shift when I'm talking to lawyers, I've spoken to many lawyers that are In the,
in the understanding that it's unethical to scale or grow or market, it's referral
only, that's, you know, I'm all about the law and I'm, I'm by the book, and so
Wait, what are you
saying?
Kevin, what are you, Kevin, what are you, what are you saying?
I feel like I feel like I lost track of this conversation.
What are you saying?
So sometimes I'm talking to attorneys that are in the mindset that there's,
they have integrity as a lawyer.
They don't want to market.
They don't want to grow because that's not the way they should be running a business.
Can I speak, can I speak, like, in RJon language?
You can, yes.
That's the dumbest fucking thing in the world.
I agree with you.
And so idiotically hypocritical and self defeating and so
completely fucking unprofessional.
It's so unprofessional, lawyers have an ethical obligation to market our services.
If we give a shit about our profession, then we have an ethical obligation
to market our services and you have a professional responsibility.
To run your law firm profitably.
It is unethical to run your law firm unprofitably, and it is our, and it is
our ethical responsibility to market our services, because you know what?
There's millions and millions of people out there, and I can prove this.
I can prove this.
There are millions and millions of people out there who are unserved.
By the legal community because they don't know a lawyer.
They don't know anyone who knows a lawyer.
They don't know how to find a lawyer.
And so they're just getting screwed over and screwed over and screwed over and
screwed over in life because no one is putting legal services in front of them.
That's what marketing is.
Marketing is when you educate prospective new clients to help them
understand that they have a problem they don't even know they've got.
You're not causing the problem by shining a light on the problem.
And then show them how they can begin taking steps to make their life better.
That's what marketing is.
And there's millions of people out there whose lives could be improved
if only a lawyer cared enough.
To do some marketing, to educate them, to show them how they can have a better life.
Amen to you, brother.
So.
Don't even get me started the whole different podcast on these lawyers who
run unprofitable law firms and commit running an unprofitable law firm is fraud.
It's fraud in the inducement when you have an unprofitable law firm with
no business plan and you fraudulently induce a person to do business with
your law firm when you have no plan for how the law firm will stay in business
long enough to finish delivering the service that you've sold them on.
You can't keep up with this.
And then
to take it to your staff and your family and everyone else that's affected by it.
If it's going
to the ground, right?
Listen, who gives a shit about your family and your staff?
I'm talking about, I'm being facetious, right?
I'm talking about the lawyers who want to like throw themselves on the
sword and be like, 'Oh, look at me.
I'm ethical and professional and I'm above marketing and I'm above pecuniary
gain.' And they're totally oblivious to, to, to the effect on their clients.
When they run an unprofitable law firm, no client wants to
hire an unprofitable law firm.
If the client were to be told the truth, if.
This is part of the reason that I don't get invited back to a lot of podcasts
and why don't I didn't get invited back to a lot of speaking engagements
because I would stand there in bar associations all over the country and
I would, I would walk lawyers through this logical process of thought.
And they would reach the inevitable conclusion that they were
running a fucking ponzi scheme.
And they should actually be disciplined by the bar because of how they run
their law firm and how they fraudulently induce their prospective new clients
to do business with their law firm.
It's fraud!
Well, you said 54 percent at the Florida bar was due to
mismanagement of the law firm.
Listen, what's it called when you, what's it called when you,
and your audience should know this.
What's it called when you misrepresent or leave out material factors to induce
a person to do business with you?
Malpractice?
No, no, no.
That's not malpractice.
That's called fraud in the inducement!
Fraud inducement.
Fraud in the
I'm not a lawyer.
Inducement!
You induce a person to do business with you by either Actively misrepresent facts.
Or you don't disclose facts that you know are material to their decision.
Yeah?
That's fraud in the inducement.
You're gonna go buy a car, Kevin.
The owner of the car knows something about the car which, If you knew
this about the car, they know you wouldn't buy the car, right?
So they don't tell you about this problem that the car's got, and you buy the car.
That's fraud!
That's called fraud in the inducement.
There's a cause of action that lawyers sue people for all the time
because of this exact fact pattern.
You get it?
Yeah, most law firms
do themselves.
Well, imagine you've got a prospective new client, right?
You've hired Array Marketing, and Array Marketing has gotten you all these
leads, and you've listened to advice on how to convert the leads, with a good
intake system, and the prospective new client has scheduled the appointment.
And then you've got a good system in place to do what we call a glide
path to get them ready for the appointment so that when they arrive
to the appointment, they're already preconditioned, pre educated and
predisposed to want to hire your firm.
And you have the sales meeting with them and they say, 'Great, I want
to hire your firm.' And you put the engagement agreement in front of them
and they pull out the pen to sign it.
And you say, 'Hold on a second, I need to disclose some things to you.
So you have all the facts.
Before you make this decision to hire my firm.' And they say, 'Oh, what's that?'
And you say, 'Well, number one, I have no business plan and I don't
really have any idea how this thing's going to stay in business a year from
now, other than hoping for the best.
And I'm willing to work hard.' 'Number two, I have no financial controls and
I don't really know where the money is coming from or where the money is
going or how this thing is, whether this thing is really profitable or not.'
'Number three.
I have no documented processes, systems or procedures so that if something were
to happen to me, I don't know how any of these services would get delivered
to you.' 'So, you know, pretty much we just have to hope, hope that I don't get
hit by a bus.' Uh, 'Number four, uh, I am stressed out beyond fucking belief.
Because of the cashflow rollercoaster that I live on.' And I'm, I'm spending
the weekends scrubbing my own toilet and mowing my own lawn and arguing with
my family over cashflow and financial problems.' And, 'Uh, I'm walking around.
Uh, broken hearted because I can't send my kid to the great college that
my kid got into because my law firm runs so unprofitably and I'm literally
like driven to distraction sometimes because of all these problems.'
'And I've got no standards that I can hold my staff to and I've got no
recruiting system in place and I've...' Who's going to hire that law firm?
No one.
Keep your mouth shut.
Have them sign the engagement agreement.
Knowing that if they knew the truth, you're going on your
business, they wouldn't hire you from that's called fraud.
The inducement.
Anyway, this is what gets me not invited back to podcasts and not
invited back to bar associations to do CLE talks because I speak this truth.
It's true.
And this is when lawyers go around saying, you know, 'Oh, you know,
it's, it's unethical to market.
It's unethical to run your law firm like a business.'
It's unethical not to run your law firm like a business.
Unless of course you are making disclosures to your clients,
which I know you're not.
Because if you made the disclosures to your clients, no one would hire you!
Spot on, and you're welcome back anytime.
Now you've just lost half of your audience.
I'm sorry.
They all tuned out and unfollowed your podcast.
That's fine.
You're speaking the
truth, and I appreciate it.
Sorry?
No.
Well, the right audience that engages with us because we believe
in everything that you believe in will take a lot from this and they
I listen to your podcast I I know that I can say these things to your
audience because your audience is better than most Podcast audiences
who don't want to hear the truth.
Yeah, hopefully they're not, you know, they're tuning into this podcast
They they should have a freaking good idea So you're totally fine.
Welcome
back anytime.
Thank you.
I appreciate you speaking the truth I really do and it's something I see all
the time and you know, I can't Beat up my prospects necessarily sometimes
on it, but it's, I see that a lot.
And actually I was talking to this one young- it was an older lady
and she wanted to work with us, but just, she's really in a tight spot
making like 150 maybe, uh, as a
gross revenue of $150,000 a year.
And she's probably taking, maybe she's taking a hundred
thousand a year out of the firm.
Maybe if she's lucky, right?
And she's probably working 60 or 70 hours a week is the problem.
And if she would work less.
She'd actually make more and here's the double irony.
She'd actually help a lot more people.
That was what I got through to her.
So she was telling me, 'Well, I don't want to do much because, you
know, I really am passionate.'
She was bringing all this passion and how she was helping.
It was like, civil rights.
In our community, helping people.
And she was so passionate about helping.
She's like, 'I got to go, I got a client I got to meet with.' 'And I want to
market maybe, but I'm not sure.' And I started talking to her and about a week
or so later, she called me back and said, 'Hey,', I was like, 'listen, you, right
now, you can help just a couple of people and you're telling me it's a big impact.'
'What if you were to help hundreds of those people, thousands of those
people, and you can lead the charge and grow in and building that.' And
she, you can see that she was like.
'Wow.
That makes so much more sense.' It's like, you're not helping enough people.
You know, you're getting one client a month right now.
It's not enough.
If
you really want to have a positive impact on the world, have a big
impact on the world, and the only way to have a big impact on the world.
is to scale up your law firm.
Oh, how about that ending, huh?
So good.
If you enjoyed this today, stay tuned next time for part two.
And if you haven't grabbed your copy of this book yet, head on
over to ProfitFirstForLawyers.com and order your copies today.
See you next time.Thank you for joining us on another episode
of Profit First for Lawyers.
If you're enjoying what you're hearing, tell a friend.
And buy your copy of the book at ProfitFirstForLawyers.
com.
Your future self will thank you for it.
And we will see you next time.