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 gonna 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 guys!
Welcome back to another episode of the Profit First For Lawyers podcast.
I'm your host, Karli, and today I'm bringing you part two in
our bonus two-part series.
Now, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and watch part one.
Where I announce that season two of the Profit First For
Lawyers podcast is coming soon.
And I bring you this bonus content from an interview that RJon did
on The Managing Partners Podcast.
Now this interview was so packed full of great information, delivered only
in the way that RJon can, but it was split up into two highly profitable,
actionable, insightful episodes that will help your law firm be more profitable.
With no further ado, here's part two.
We're going to hear RJon talk about our definition of a successful law firm,
the difference between an expense and an investment, and why trying to spend
less may actually be costing you more.
Lastly, RJon's going to talk about his book, Profit First for Lawyers.
and his hopes for you, the listener and/or the reader.
Okay, let's get into it.
Let's roll that clip.
It's just how the world works.
You can't have a big impact on the world at small scale.
You want to have a big impact, you got to scale up.
Now you want to make big donations?
Help nonprofits?
You can't write big checks if you don't got no money.
You can't give a lot of people great jobs and terrific career opportunities.
If you can't employ anyone because you're running a little
operation out of your basement.
That's another thing too.
So that's a big thing we do here.
We're prescribed to, we're always growing.
If you go work for a firm and they're like, 'Okay, what's
my career look like here?'
'Uh, well, we're going to stay small and nimble.'
And, 'Well, where's the opportunity for me?
I want to be able to grow leadership opportunities, travel, you know,
whatever it may be more money, security for my family.' I can't offer
a young person any of that stuff.
If I'm like, 'Yeah, we're not growing.
We don't scale here.
This is a mom and pop.' And then, 'And that's all we're going to keep it.'
I don't want to go work at that company.
Our 'Definition of a Successful Law Firm', and you probably heard this from
our members who come to work with you.
Our 'Definition of a Successful Law Firm' is a law firm that serves the owner.
In at least three ways, "Has To Serve You Financially."
Means it has to give you enough net operating income or total owner benefit
to live the way you want to live, not.
To let you get by, not so you can, you know, not all lists of all the things
you can do without not, Hey, you know, I don't, I can live with just this,
you know, why live with just this?
If you're capable of living with more, "Has To Serve You Financially."
Second criteria for a successful law firm, according to me and How
To MANAGE professionally is it "Has To Serve You Professionally."
Which means, it has to give you a platform to have a
big positive impact on the world, or at least a big enough positive impact on
the world to satisfy you professionally.
And do it in a way that allows you to work with people you like working with
doing work that is meaningful to you.
And third, 'Definition of a Successful Law Firm' is it
"Has To Serve You Personally."
Which means it has to run efficiently and predictably.
And well enough so you can step away for 30 days, at least 30 days
with emergency access only with confidence that the business will
work for you even while you're gone.
So it "Has To Serve You Financially."
"Has To Serve You Personally."
"Has To Serve You Professionally."
And
one of the, one of the reasons why, How To MANAGE keeps growing.
And we've grown 10,000 percent in the last nine years.
We've been in 5,000 every single year for nine years in a row.
You know, look financially, I, my mortgage is paid off.
I have no debt.
I have, let's just say, I don't have a financial need to keep
growing this business, and yet I keep growing this business.
Why do I do it?
I do it because number one.
I want to have a bigger impact on the world and help more lawyers
build better law firms that help thousands and thousands and thousands
of more clients and create jobs.
And I just like helping people grow and reach their full potential.
That's my professional motivation.
And, and also I have to keep growing it because how else am I going to
attract and retain amazing superstars?
You don't attract and retain amazing superstars by saying,
'We're not going to grow.' 100%.
It's exactly what you just said.
I mean, they want to know what's the opportunity, what's next.
And you know, you don't have to have like the greatest, biggest, most
elaborate ambitions in the world, but you gotta be able to show a person an
opportunity that you're going somewhere if you want them to come with you.
And this is part of the, this is the irony, the paradox, if you will, of
these small law firms that are struggling and then they struggle and they make
the wrong hiring decisions, right?
So instead of hiring a lawyer to replace themselves, they
hire lawyers to assist them.
And then they wonder why they can never get away from the firm.
The first strategic hire that every small law firm owner listening
to this ought to make are people to replace yourself, right?
So if you can hire someone to help you for, let's say, I'm just making this up.
$75,000 for a baby lawyer for a baby lawyer and $150,000.
Let's just say for a grown up lawyer, the $150,000 lawyer is going to be much more
profitable for you than the baby lawyer.
And you tell yourself 'Well I can't afford the $150,000 a year lawyer.' You
can't afford the $75,000 baby lawyer.
You can only afford the $150,000 grownup lawyer.
But of course, if you don't have a business plan and you don't have any
financial controls and you don't know your cost of goods sold and you don't have a
budget and you don't track your data and you don't know your numbers and you don't
pay attention to how your business runs.
Well, then you don't see what's blatantly obvious to the rest of us,
which is the $150,000 grownup is way more profitable in the short term and
in the long term than the $75,000 baby.
And I can get into explaining all the reasons why, if you want me to.
I think that's a good point, and you're going to spend a lot of
your time training, and they're going to be shadowing you all
the time, and you're going to be less time to bill for yourself.
I 100 percent agree, and
Let's say Let's put some math to it.
$75,000 lawyer, right?
$75,000, times 1.2, gross it up to $90,000, with payroll
taxes, benefits, $90,000.
Divided by, let's say 46 productive weeks in a year.
That's all you're really going to get out of a person.
$1,956 is what it costs you per week, per week.
Okay.
I did the math wrong.
$90,000 divided by 52 weeks is going to cost you $1,730 per week, right?
$150,000 a year lawyer would obviously be twice that much.
It'd be $3,400 a week.
Except the difference is that the $150,000 lawyer is going
to be breaking even in 30 days.
You put together a good onboarding plan.
The first 30 days of any new employee's time on the job, I don't want them doing
one single productive thing for your firm.
All I want you doing for the first 30 days Is investing,
investing, investing, investing, and setting them up for success.
So you can have a long term profitable person in that role, right?
So let's say, uh, the $90,000 person, $90,000 divided by 52 is, I'm
writing this down so I don't forget, $90,000 is $1,700 a week, and the
$150,000 person is $3,500 a week.
You with me?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
So let's say you invest 4 weeks on the $3,500 an hour, $150,000
a year, I'm sorry, $3,500 a week, $150,000 a year, grown up, self
sufficient, experienced lawyer.
You spend, you invest a month training, training, training,
training, training, really training them to be successful with you.
So $3,500 times 4, you got $14,000 invested in this person.
You with me?
But then they're up and running.
At 14, at $14,000 invested, boom, they're at least breaking even for
a month or two, and then they start making a profit for you in a month.
The $1,700 a week, quote unquote, less expensive, $75,000 half price.
Scratch and dent baby wet behind the ears.
You have to train them how to do everything.
And they come back to you and ask you a questions and
questions, a million questions.
It might take you three months to get that person to break even if you're lucky.
Right?
So $1,700 a week times 12 weeks, three months is $20,000.
So it costs you less and you get to break even sooner.
And probably $150,000 a year lawyer.
And then on top of that, the $150,000 a year lawyer, you're probably
going to have a higher profit margin on, and they're going to ask
you less questions in the future.
And if something were to happen to you, they can take over and you can
give them a bunch of stuff directly off of your caseload and let them do it.
And then you can focus on working on the business instead of doing
all the legal work yourself.
I'm sorry?
That's a really good tip right there.
I watch these people, stack associates all day long and not have any
other senior attorney all the time.
And then it also, what, what ends up happening is you know, one out of three,
one out of three baby lawyers who's never practiced law before, or they
barely practiced law before they they're working for you for three months, six
months, nine months in your practice area.
And then they'd say, 'You know what?
I don't really like this practice area as much as I thought I was going to.' Right?
'It looked really interesting from the outside, but I've never done it
before.' 'And it turns out I don't really like doing bankruptcy.' 'I
don't really like doing divorce.' 'I don't really like doing immigration.'
'I don't really like doing intellectual.' Whatever it is.
Right?
And they need to follow their bliss.
They need to follow their career.
They need to do what's right for them.
And what's right for them is to leave.
And so you have to start all over again.
And you just invested, you wasted potentially, uh, $40,000, $50,000.
The person who's been practicing for, you know, for a while, they know what
it's like to be a family law attorney.
They know what it's like to be an M&A attorney.
They know what it's like to be a litigator.
They know what that's like.
They're not going to wake up and say, 'I changed my mind.'
'I don't want to do this anymore.'
They've already gone through that.
They've been through that.
They've already, they've already left three other practice areas behind.
Anyway, this could be a whole other podcast.
And I'd be happy to get, listen, I can talk about any of this stuff all day long.
I love talking about this stuff.
No, there's so many different topics and, we can go down a ton of rabbit
holes and I've, I appreciate that,
but that's why everyone should go to www.HowToMANAGE.com and
download the free app and.
Yes, if you're if you're on us with video, LinkedIn, YouTube,
Facebook, right down below it's www.HowToMANAGE.com . If you're in
your car, driving to work, whatever.
Pull over!
Go to www.HowToMANAGE.com
Don't get hurt!
I
know a lot of, uh, uh, personal injury attorneys.
So, no, RJon, I appreciate everything you've, you've come on here to share.
I love the passion and, and that's what we, that's what I'm looking for, right?
That's what we need on this show.
What these attorneys that I speak with often that just aren't
in a good spot, need to hear.
And so I appreciate it.
Are we winding down here?
What's that?
Are we winding down?
If you want to wind down, you got, I wanted to make sure.
Share.
No, I'm happy all day long.
I just wanna make sure that I have a chance to talk about my book.
No, no.
That's exactly what I was about to do.
I was like, let's, I wanted to share about your book, so not
winding down, but I wanna make sure that, um, we can flip over to
that.
RJon's got a new book, Profit First for
Lawyers.
And I'm going to put up the, the book here real quick too.
Just, I know he's holding it up.
It's on your screen, but Profit First for Lawyers.
And you can go to this QR code, too.
Right there.
I don't know how to do it.
So, just real quick.
So, I'll let RJon kind of talk about his, book real quick.
It's the best book that's ever been written!
It is.
It's even better than my last book.
This is now the best book ever.
No, really, if you have already read Profit First, this book will go deeper
into a whole bunch of things that Mike wasn't able to get into because he
wasn't writing a book just for lawyers.
It'll give you a lot of context for a lot of things.
It'll help you understand why.
I'll just read through the table of contents to give you an idea.
Yeah.
And I'll add, so I am a Profit First company.
We, we read Mike's book, Profit First, and implemented it
about four or five years ago.
And so we were very deep into it.
And then of course RJon and his team was nice enough to send me.
A copy before his book published, that me and my business partner read.
And yes, it's, it's very much aligned with how a law firm operates and
dives into those different things.
So,
Yeah, so, I mean, if you've already read Profit First, I think this
book will be really fun for you.
It'll definitely be profitable for you.
You'll learn new ways to implement Profit First to make
your law firm more profitable.
It'll also give you a lot of ammunition that you can use when your bookkeeper,
your accountant, your partners.
You know, fight you on Profit First because anyone, I mean, everyone who's
doing They fight us on it, right?
The table of contents is, "This Book Will Make Your Law Firm
More Profitable.", And it will.
Two, "You Are Not Alone."
Number three, "Our Definition Of Success of a Successful Law Firm
(And Why It Should Be Your Definition Of A Successful Law Firm Too!)",
and why you should hold everyone in your law firm to this standard.
Four.
But Profit-, "But Financial Profit Isn't The Only Measure of Success."
And I kind of gave a little hint about that financial profit,
personal profit, professional profit.
You got to make sure your law firm is doing all three for you.
Chapter 5, "The 7 Main Parts of Every Successful Law Firm."
Chapter Six.
"What Is Profit?"
What does profit actually mean?
Because if you ask two different lawyers, how profitable their law firm is, you're
liable to get at least three different answers and it'll drive you insane.
But once you understand what profit really is and how to measure it and
what Total Owner Benefits means.
It'll give you a lot of clarity and give you a lot of confidence and
you'll have more productive, healthier conversations with other lawyers.
Number seven, "Understanding Why Your C.P.A Doesn't Absolutely
Love Putting Your Profits First."
"Understanding Why Your C.P.A Does Not Love Putting Your Profits First."
Will make you a lot more profitable and make your life a lot better.
I promise you why number eight, "Why Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles, Why GAAP Isn't For You."
If you own your own law firm.
GAAP is not for us.
GAAP is, if you get nothing else from this podcast, GAAP is not for us.
Chapter 9 is defining an, very, very important accounting term.
99.
9 percent of C.P.As.
don't know.
They literally don't know "Total Owner Benefits."
You've got to live on.
You got to know what "Total Owner Benefits" are, or you're going
to be wasting money on taxes.
You, your profits are going to be much diminished and it'll
drive you a little bit crazy.
Chapter 10, is understanding the difference between "Static
Overhead and Dynamic Overhead."
And when Mike was at my house having dinner, when we first had the
idea of doing something like this.
We talked about static overhead versus dynamic overhead, and I don't
think he would mind me saying this.
He was like, basically like, 'Damn!
I should have put that in my book."
so, but you know, he already wrote the book.
Chapter 11, "What a Small Law Firm Bookkeeper (Who Doesn't Suck) Should
Be Doing For You.", a law firm bookkeeper who doesn't suck should
be doing things for you and, and lay it all out for you in chapter
11 so you can measure and evaluate.
Whether your bookkeeper is doing a good job for you or not, because a bad
bookkeeper or a bookkeeper who you like them, they're wonderful, they're nice,
they're terrific, they're friendly, they send you a Christmas ham every year,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but they're flushing your life down the fucking
toilet, that's not a good bookkeeper.
Uh, you gotta make sure- a bad bookkeeper, and by good and bad, I don't mean
that they do the books accurately.
Doing books accurately is table stakes.
A bookkeeper.
Yeah.
That's like the
minimum requirement,
minimum, minimum, minimum requirement.
But you talk to lawyers like, 'Oh, you like your bookkeeper?'
'Yeah.
They do my books accurately!' Yeah.
And I mean, that, that's the minimum.
It must be
honest.
Most bookkeepers started as like an admin assistant that
just becomes the bookkeeper.
No, I'm talking about good bookkeepers.
I'm talking about, there are bookkeepers out there who are good bookkeepers.
They are, they do accurate bookkeeping.
They were trained as bookkeepers, they work for a C.P.A, they work
for a C.P.A by the way who thinks GAAP is gospel and it's not.
They're trained and they do good bookkeeping, they're
professional bookkeepers, and they do accurate bookkeeping.
But they still suck because they're sucking all the profits out of your
firm and you're thanking them for it.
Chapter 12 are, we, we walk you through, I walk you through "The
Key Financial Reports That Every Small Law Firm Bookkeeper Who
Does Not Suck Ought to Insist On Walking You Through Every Month."
If your bookkeeper isn't insisting, if your bookkeeper
isn't a big pain in your ass.
And insisting on walking you through these key financial reports every month.
They suck and they're doing you a disservice and you are leaving probably
tens of thousands of dollars of profit on the table, possibly even every month or
every quarter, or at the very least every year, depending on the size of your firm.
And then we go into "A Much Deeper Dive into the Drivers of Profit Than
Most Struggling Law Firm Owners Are Ever Willing to Take" seriously.
That's the book.
And if you have already read Profit First, or better yet, listened to
the audio, the audio is great.
Mike records it himself.
If you've already listened to Profit First, or read Profit First, this
will add a lot of color and dimension to your, to your experience.
If you've never read Profit First, This book is meant to be a rallying cry.
This meant this book is meant to convince you to read Profit First
and to implement Profit First.
And, anyway, I hope everyone reads it.
Yeah, I would say myself.
I didn't hire a ghost writer.
I actually sat down and wrote the whole book in nine days.
Well, I, I think I got a copy of yours before it was even like published, so I
got like some, like a rougher copy, which.
It's great.
So, I will say this, everyone listening.
Profit First.
Get RJon's book, version of it, if you're a law firm, of course.
But
you have to
Read the book with the intention to start applying it.
And it's not easy.
Our bank pushed back on us.
Our C.P.A pushed back on us.
Our bookkeeper has had to constantly evolve and to get the reports
and things that we want to do, but don't let it overwhelm you.
You need to start.
And we started early and I'm glad we did.
And.
We get profits and we make profits and we, it's, it'll,
it'll change your life for sure.
So I would say,
Can I put a little math to this?
Yeah.
All right.
Do it up.
I'm taking out my calculator here.
Let's say your law firm runs at, let's just say 25 percent Total Owner Benefit.
I'm just using that as a number to make them, to make the math example,
easy 25 percent Total Owner Benefit.
You with me?
Mm hmm.
And let's say that you're billing by the hour, which by the way, I really wish
you would do value based billing, but let's say you're billing by the hour.
Um, and let's say you bill at, give me a number.
What's, what's the number that your average.
Array client is billing per hour.
$300.
We'll say $300 an hour, great.
And let's say your law firm's going to gross, let's just say a half, $500,000.
Right.
Um, $500,000.
Divided by $300 an hour is 1,666 hours that you have to bill.
Yeah.
If you do Profit First and you can increase your profits
by let's just say 10%.
Right.
If you can increase your profits by 10%.
So a $500,000 firm at a 25 percent Total Owner Benefit margin, $500,000 times
.25 means the owner is going to have $125, 000 in Total Owner Benefits.
You with me?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
If you can increase your profits by just 10%, you could reduce your billables.
By 166 hours a year, the 166 hours you don't have to work.
Put another way, 1,666 1,666 hours times $300 an hour is $500,000 a year.
1,666 hours divided by 12 months.
Is 138 hours a month, right?
If you could get the same Total Owner Benefit out of a $450,000 law firm, take
the same $125,000 Total Owner Benefit, except instead of having to gross
$500,000, you only have to gross $450,000.
$450,000 divided by $300 an hour means you only have to bill 1500 hours a year.
That's 166 hours a year that you don't have to bill.
166 hours you don't have to bill divided by 46 productive weeks in a year.
That's three hours a week you don't have to bill.
What could you do with those three hours a week?
Could you use those three hours a week to do better marketing,
to bring in more revenue?
Could you use those three hours a week to do more training?
So you have a better staff.
Do you want to take those three hours a week and put them together?
And have 14 hours once a month.
That means once a month, you could take two days off.
You could take two days off once a month and have the same
Total Owner Benefit income.
If you could just increase your profits by 10 percent by using
something like Profit First.
Another thing to think about is you could take off one whole week, a
quarter, one full week per quarter.
You could take off a whole week per quarter to spend time with your
family, to work on your health, work on your business, do whatever you want.
This makes a difference to the quality of your life.
This makes a difference to the quality of your relationships with your family.
This makes a difference to your health.
This makes a difference to, it makes so many differences in so many ways.
It seems so simple.
It really makes a difference to take Profits First.
Yeah, if you've never listened to it or read the book, Yeah, I think
most people see it and they're like, 'Oh, that sounds unethical.
profits first?
Profits before employees.
Profits before family.' You got to read it because then you'll understand it,
You know, when you're going to- when you go on a commercial airline, you know,
they, you know, they tell you what to do.
If there's an emergency, when the airbag drops, the oxygen mask,
Put it on yourself first.
Why?
So you can help others.
Because if you can't help yourself, you can't help anyone.
Wouldn't it be great to take a week off to rest and recharge
and be your best for your clients and be your best for your family?
Profit First can help you do that.
Yeah.
Amazing.
I'm just trying to sell a book.
I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to sell a book and convince you to read
the book and take the book seriously.
What you do with your life.
That's up to you.
Well, you can also tune in, just put it on the screen.
It's kind of over top us, but, they're like, Ooh, Profit First For Lawyers.
So RJon actually has a podcast of Profit First For Lawyers.
If you just Google "Profit First For Lawyers".
You'll, you'll see his book, you'll see the podcast.
It all comes up on Google.
I want to say, Kevin, we have already sold 26,000 books.
It just went, it launched in August, I think, right?
July, August.
Uh, not very long ago,
July, it launched in July.
This is September.
We've sold 28,000 books.
I have waiting lists after waiting lists after waiting lists for all different
products and services that we sell.
This isn't me like, 'Oh, I got to get another client.' I told you that
a big part of the motivation why I have grown How To MANAGE a Small Law
Firm as, as much as I've grown it, you know, this year, last year we
did 29 and a half million dollars.
This year we'll do 34, 35 million dollars.
Uh, we'll be probably close to 45, 50 million next year in revenue.
I don't need to make more money from this thing.
I want to have a bigger impact on the legal industry.
And I want to help more people.
And, um, part of the reason that I agreed to take nine days out of my life to
write this book, because Mike asked me to write this book for lawyers and I did.
Mike's awesome.
Ron's pretty cool too.
What's that?
And Ron's pretty cool too.
Mike's partner.
Who runs Profit First Professionals.
Yeah.
Mike's hilarious.
So I said his name, right?
And he was very excited about that one time on a podcast.
Yes.
Michalowicz.
All right.
What else would you ask me?
What else would your audience like to know?
I'm happy to sit here all day talking.
I love this stuff.
No, I mean, I, this is, this is what I do.
I talk about business and I get to have attorneys on here and
some are very successful, right.
And they've done it right.
And they've run a good business and I bring them on here to share what
they've done and what they've learned.
And a lot of times they are a How To MANAGE member.
And they, they.
You've had some of our members as guests?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Can you think of anyone off the top of your head?
Well, I had Jimmy Grant on recently.
Not sure who else.
I don't know.
I've had 300 attorneys.
I've heard a few, but I'm drawing a blank.
The lights are shining on my face.
The microphone's in my mouth.
I've had a lot of good guests, so it's hard to put a finger on it.
It's
it's easy to forget a lot of stuff when you got the lights in your face and
they can microphone in your mouth, so...
I got my big light right here, too.
Yeah, exactly.
No, but I think Jimmy Grant's the last one that I know of that
was a How To MANAGE member But to your point to your point.
Everyone on here should be looking to grow their firms expand it even if the money
is not the driving factor But you still have those other two goals the personal
and professional and I was gonna add to this too It's not only your as an owner
personal, or professional, personal, and financial goals, but you know, we
have that for each of our employees.
What are their professional, personal and financial goals?
And how are we helping them meet those goals?
So take that to your staff as well.
Like, hey, senior attorney or associate attorney or admin.
It doesn't matter.
How about receptionist, paralegal, secretary?
How can we help you achieve your financial, personal
and professional goals?
100%.
And, and whatever it may be.
And sometimes what I've found with some of my employees, they
don't even have that mindset and they don't even know what to say.
Like, 'Oh, I don't really have any goals.' And you're like, 'Okay, let's sit down.
Let's talk.
Like you, we got to work on this.' Like, 'What do you want to do?
' 'There's gotta be something you're passionate about that you'd like to
do outside of this office.' Right.
And so we'll, we'll dig it out of them slowly.
Like you gotta have some ambition.
We got to figure something out.
And they're like, 'Well, I've always wanted to run a
marathon in wherever.' Yeah.
We might be able to say, 'All right, well, you're going, we
got you a ticket and you're off.'
And you can take your time.
You're referring to a few books that I love, because we do the same thing.
I mean, this, this, every, every one of our employees at How To MANAGE, we
have, we help them create what we call a "Business Contribution Plan."
And, you know, we've got our business plan that's got our plans for the future.
And so we help them create a "Business Contribution Plan", which is
basically a personal career life plan.
And we merge it together.
Like this is how it fits into our business plan.
And that is great because then we know, okay, you know what, we're going to
help you achieve your financial goals, your personal goals, your professional
goals, whatever, whatever, whatever.
And we map out that.
Okay.
36 months, you're gonna have to leave working for us to go
off in this other direction.
But we can get you there and you're gonna get the most amazing performance outta
that person, for that period of time until it's time to go your separate ways.
Yeah.
And then they leave on, and then they leave on great terms.
And then they help you find their replacement and then they help
you on board the replacement.
And then when you've got questions after they're gone, they're happy
to take your call and help you out.
And then what's really cool is they often will send you other employees
or other candidates that they run into.
And then your recruiting becomes easier.
And then when you're recruiting candidates and you talk about the fact that this
is something that you do for them, that this is part of the culture of
your business, the wrong people don't care and the right people love it.
100%.
And they might call back and say, 'Hey, can I come back?'
Yeah, they do.
The place they go might not have this in place.
Probably a good
chance.
It doesn't.
Well, yeah, but the thing is, if you're doing your job as an employer,
you're helping your employee make.
The career move, you're counseling them, you're coaching
them, you're advising them.
You don't just let them pick a new job on their own.
You say, 'Look, let us help you figure out if this is the right job for you.'
I had a, I had a, one of our, one of our people from our accounting department
recently who was, he needed to grow.
He needed to leave our...he needed to leave working for How To MANAGE a Small
Law Firm to continue to grow his career.
Because at that time, there just wasn't anywhere else for him to go.
If you want to stick around for two or three years, there's some place for
you to go, but you really shouldn't stick around for two or three years.
You're ready to go to the next level.
You just don't have an opportunity in our organization right now.
So you let us help you figure out what your next move is going to be.
And I mean, I coached him, I counseled him.
We, we sat down and helped him evaluate three different options, three different
opportunities that he had and helped him pick the right opportunity.
And I actually sat down, I was actually sitting with the owner of that law firm
that he ultimately went to go work for, and he's been promoted twice since then.
The point I'm making, you got to help people get to where they want to go.
That that's really how you build and sustain a successful business.
And I personally think it's good life.
Yeah.
And you can't, you
can't just be stuck on the fact that they can't leave here.
They can't leave me, you know, they got to stay here forever.
And then God forbid, you're running a firm that's not growing
and scaling and has no processes, and then you're just, you're doing
a huge disservice to that person.
You know, what kind of business, put things in place to prevent
people from being able to leave.
We talked about restaurants.
We talked about hotels...
Law firms?
Prisons.
Oh.
Prisons!
Prisons are designed to prevent people from being able to leave.
And that's what you
possibly built.
Right?
Yeah, I mean, you know, anyway, that's not a good place to try
to recruit superstars into.
No.
You gotta, you gotta build something.
And this goes back to the processes and the systems and the procedures, because
if you've got processes and systems and procedures for recruiting, for onboarding,
for training, and if you can put a really good person into a system and get
amazing performance out of them, you're not afraid of someone outgrowing you.
It's actually an amazing thing for recruiting when you've got a culture
where everyone knows that people are going someplace and doing something.
I've lost a few, uh, good employees to entrepreneurship.
And when they came in the door as an intern, we knew if we don't keep
up with this person and give them enough opportunity fast enough,
they're, they're not going to be here.
We just, we could tell, we could feel it.
And now, now when we bring someone on like that, we're like, we, they
cannot be like a low level person.
They have to have a path.
Uh, as if everyone has to.
But...
I challenge, I wanna challenge you to just think about the mindset
that you just demonstrated there.
Sorry to challenge you on a mindset thing, live on your podcast . That's fine.
You said 'We've lost a few employees.' I say we've graduated a few employees.
All right.
I love it.
I appreciate that.
And I wasn't saying it in a bad
way.
I know you weren't, but the words make a difference, not just for
you, but for your whole team.
We literally think of ourselves as like, we graduate people out of working with us.
Look, we graduate our members.
A law firm comes into How To MANAGE a Small Law Firm with zero dollars in
revenue or they come in with $250,000 in revenue or they come in with $500,000 in
revenue or they come in with a million dollars in revenue or sometimes they come
in with a few million dollars in revenue.
And our goal is to graduate them up and out of How To MANAGE a Small
Law Firm so that they can bring in a full time in-house professional legal
administrator so that they can bring in-house a full time, controller or CFO.
And so they can bring in a full time in-house CEO and, and
then they outgrow our services.
And that's like some of our best...I just got a text last night
from one of our former members.
And she literally just, I mean, I get texts like this all the
time from our former members.
And she was just saying, that they're on a 10 million dollar run rate.
And she was like at the, what did she say?
About to break $10 million on the year.
And here I'm covering the name.
Like, I can't make this stuff up.
Right?
Wow, that's awesome.
I love it when people outgrow us.
That means we're doing the right thing.
We're helping people grow.
Why else do people want to do business with you?
That's a good testament right there.
Why would they be texting you?
They obviously felt How To MANAGE is a big part of why they got there.
I get texts like that all the time.
It's really very, very, I love it when people, I mean, I still send
texts and celebrations to my mentors and that's the right kind of mentor,
that's the right kind of coach,
that's the right kind of advisor, that's the right kind of employer
you should be looking for.
Someone who wants to help you grow and isn't afraid of you
outgrowing their business model.
We also have Scaling Up Your Law Firm.
Scaling Up Your Law Firm will take you from $1 million to $10
million, $10 million to $25 million, $25 million to $100 million.
And just like Mike Michalowicz with Profit First came to us and asked us
to write Profit First For Lawyers.
Yeah.
Vern.
Yeah.
Vern, came and asked, you know, the Scaling Up organization, asked us to
create a program called Scaling Up Your Law Firm, which we just launched.
There's a waiting list for it.
I'm not trying to sell it.
I'm just making the point.
You want people to grow.
You gotta have, you gotta help people grow.
100%.
And I think, you know, you come into the realization that, you're
gonna have good folks come in to your team and they might be gone.
You might not want to see them go, but it's the right thing for them.
It's gotta be the right move for them.
And so we have a lot of team members that have left and I
think that's the thing too.
Like I try to call my team, team, not employees or staff.
But it's, there's so many that I'm still in contact with.
That say, 'Hey, I saw you guys are hiring for this.
I know someone.' And then that's a good referral, right?
I know that if you're gonna, they're gonna send me someone that they think
would be a good fit for our organization.
So it's, it's a great way to go.
That's a good tool.
Speaking of
which I actually have to interview a candidate who was
referred by one of our employees.
And I got to do that 10 minutes from now.
So I got to jump.
Yeah.
When you get ready for that, we've spent plenty of time on here and I appreciate
all the passion and, and bringing the fire and that's what we want on here.
You've got to get Profit First For Lawyers..
Again, it changed our business.
And you got to check it out and they got the podcast too.
So, RJon's actually always looking for questions too, and
he'll answer those on the podcast.
So go in and interact with that and he'll answer his questions if you have them.
And then, if you're listening right now and you have other questions,
things that I can ask RJon or maybe have him back on, let me know.
Like, the hardest things you can come up with.
We can answer them for you.
So, RJon, thank you so much.
I
appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Thank you for having me.
And, and again, I, I would not have accepted the invitation if I hadn't
been hearing good things from my team about their work with your team and
the results you get with our members.
And of course, I also listen to your podcast and it's pretty cool.
Thank you.
Well, I appreciate that.
Well, I'm going to stop recording here.
You stay on with me for just a second if you have it.
Everyone have a great day go out there scale your law firm listen to RJon.
Check out How To MANAGE, check out his book and his podcast.
He's gonna help you one way or another.
So, uh, just do that and have a great day and we'll see you on
the next episode.
Bye.
And that's what we've got for you today.
Folks, if you have questions for RJon, send those my way at
Podcast@ProfitFirstForLawyers.com.
And be sure to check out our earlier episodes if you want to get more great
content that will help you accelerate your law firm's growth and give you
more insights that will help you live the life that you want to live.
And make sure you hit those like and subscribe buttons so that you know
the moment new episodes are released.
We will see you in season two.
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.