Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Most firms survive. The best ones scale.
Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think bigger.
I'm Kevin. Daisy.
Let's jump in. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast. I have a. Maybe a familiar face here today. Got Tyson on the show. We're going to be talking about, really a shift from being a practicing managing attorney to a CEO mindset, and I'm excited to kind of dive into that. And Tyson's here to share. And Tyson has his own firm. He also has Max Law Maxim Lawyer, if you're familiar.
And he's got some exciting stuff to share. So, Tyson, man, welcome to the show.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Kevin. It's. It's kind of fun. You and I were just kind of shooting the shit a little bit beforehand, and I was like, we're wasting. We're wasting some good. Some good content here. I know that maybe, I don't know, maybe you think that people may not have benefited from where you grew up, but I thought it was. I can't. I still. You told me how to pronounce it. Chinka Tig or something like that island. I think it's. I think it's pretty cool.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Chincoteague Island? Yeah, Chincoteague Island. It's the Indian name in Ko Tig. It is an island off the east coast of Virginia, and cool place to grow up. I mean, a couple thousand people surrounded by water. Kind of like a waterman kind of town. Not as glamorous as you would think, like the Hamptons or something like that, but a cool place to grow up. And, you know, rental property there now, and my whole family lives there, so it's. It's a cool place to take the kids, do some fun stuff.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: So, I mean, rental property, to me, seems like it would be really, really valuable on an island like that, but maybe not, but it seems like that would be, like, really valuable land. So hopefully. Hopefully that's a really good thing for you.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, me and my wife, you know, it's a side business for us, and, you know, she's always been an employee and just worked her kind of in that kind of role. And I've always been entrepreneur and creating businesses and real estate was something I'm passionate about and wanted to get into. And me and her have always done good at it. Buying rental properties made sense, Something I like to do, look at real estate all the time. So, yeah, bought a house there 20, 20, 2019 for, like a hundred grand. It's now worth close to half a Million in just a few years. Covid, thanks a lot.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: You're. Yeah. How many businesses do you own at this point? I mean, holy crap. You have. You have so many businesses.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Four, technically. I guess so. Yeah. And it's not. We're not here to talk about me, but.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: I know, but I meant it's. It's all interesting stuff. I've got my. All my list of things about you. I've got.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: How this started is because I was asking him what. What city he was in, and he's in Missouri. And I said, yeah, like Kansas City, Missouri. And then it was like, well, it's not in. Not in Kansas. And then I said, well, I'm from Virginia beach, which people ask me where. What state that's in. So I was like, virginia, duh. So that's how the conversation started. So.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: That's right. I went on a rant about people thinking that Kansas City's in Kansas.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: So led from there, I was blaming Kansas City, Missouri, for the confusion with Virginia Beach, Virginia, because I don't think people trust the state name and the city name because of that.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: We'll take the blame. That's fine. I'm okay with that.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Well, Tyson, man, tell me you know a little bit about yourself, your firm, and then Maxim Lawyer. Like, what's that?
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I run a personal injury firm. Been running it since 2010. 2010. Ish. 2011, actually. 2011, have a couple offices. One in St. Louis, one in Columbia.
Obvious personal injury. Early on, I did criminal defense. Fortunately, got out of that around 20, about 2006, 2007.
It was great. But doing that just. I mean, enjoyed being an injury attorney. It's not what I thought it was going to be. I thought whenever I went to law school that injury attorneys were just ambulance chasers. And I had this completely different view. Fortunately, I got an internship early on that.
That really kind of shook that out of me, which is good. And then in 2015ish, Jim Hacking and I, we started a Maximum Lawyer. And it really just kind of started with a couple guys just having conversations about marketing and business and all that. And we started recording it. And then next, you know, it led to a conference and a Facebook group, and now we've got the gilded. And so it's. It's been a cool journey. This is our ninth year. We just celebrated, actually just last Friday, our ninth year of Maximum Lawyer, which is just kind of incredible to think. It's.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: It's awesome.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: I don't know if when we started, if I thought it was Going to go nine years. I really don't. But the fact that we're just celebrating nine years is just insane.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: I mean, you know, there's not many groups around that have been around that long and.
And stood strong. So I, you know, through clients and through lawyers. I know I've heard about maximum lawyer, but I'm not a lawyer, of course.
So I hear the buzz about it here, the talk about it, but I didn't really know much about, you know, about the group itself. And so, yeah, nine years. Obviously people value it and they're getting a lot out of it, so they want to see it continue.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: It's really kind of interesting because the way. Just like podcasting, just. Just strictly podcasting, not talking about anything else, because in between, we had Covid and everything. But you have. When it comes to podcasting alone, how different it was back in 2015 compared to now or 2016 compared to now, it is so different.
I mean, the data that you have is way better than what we started with. And so just that alone, even the data's not great compared to things like SEO. Like SEO, I feel like you can get a lot more data.
They're way more restrictive when it comes to. But it's way better than what it was when we started. We started with. I always forget the name of this dang app. Remember the video app, the first one that just went out of business recently. I can't think of the name of it.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Like, to. To publish video.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: No, no, it was actually like the. It was kind of like a Zoom. It was before Zoom was. It was. I just can't think of Skype. Skype? Yeah. So we. We started. We had bought this.
There was an app that went with Skype that we used to record.
So we started with that, and it was garbage. It was just absolute garbage. And then we. At some point we had. We went to. We were recording on a conference line when the audio was not fantastic, but it was. The microp. Not as good. The microphones are. You know, they're. They were decent, but the microphones, I mean, we have now are way better microphones. It's just night and day.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: But this thing's awesome.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Video recording, it just. It's a different. It's a different world. It's kind of. It's. It's really cool to look back and see how things have changed so much.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's. You know, when I first started me, I've been doing podcasts for about five or six years. I guess this podcast is probably Almost four years that we're on right now. But I. I feel like, yeah, it feels like you're almost in the back in the day, like talking into nothing. Right. And then you don't really have a lot of data on like, who or how many people and. And what's my audience. So I. It's definitely coming better, but the video aspect of it helps a lot to be able to. To see the video and put it on YouTube and do clips and reels and LinkedIn and all that stuff makes you feel more of a. An experience, I guess, than like, you're just audio only going into, so you don't know where. You know what I mean?
[00:07:25] Speaker A: I'm very curious what your habits are, because I am someone that I like to listen to podcasts on YouTube. And so because I've got YouTube Premium. And the reason why I like that is I like to be able to. If they're mentioning something that I want to look at, I want to actually pull it up and look at it. So are you. Are you that kind? Are you more of like listening on Spotify or Apple Podcast or something like that? Because I think there's a definite split on what people do.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: I have YouTube Premium, so if I'm going to listen to a podcast, I'm using that. Cause I use it for music. And then for me, if I'm driving the office, I'll pop in maybe a podcast and listen to it on the way. I tend to just go to music because I'm like, okay, I got 30 minutes to not think about work or learning something for a second. But if I really want to learn something or like take it in, I want to watch a video where they're through, they're explaining, or they're showing things, whatever with financial or stocks or crypto or whatever. To me, I like watching the video if I can.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm the same way. But there, there's definitely a split. I think a lot of people, I still think the majority of people, they. And they don't. They don't watch. But having YouTube Premium, I always recommend people to, to get YouTube Premium because it's. To me, it's such a. It's such a good deal. It's not that expensive.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: So I give my wife crap all the time because she's got Sirius XM and a new car and like, it's always going in and out and there's like little commercials in between. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, no, yeah, YouTube Premium. And I. If, if you go out of signal. It goes to my downloads automatically, and then it pulls from my download library, which is huge. And then you can pick any song you want, anytime you want, versus satellite, where it's like you don't know what's coming up next. So I was like, I don't know how they're still in business, but I don't either.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Doesn't make sense.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Then you can watch a video or listen to it, and there's a video version of it. It'll flip right to the video version of the, the artist, or in this case, podcast version too. So, yeah, YouTube's great. And then YouTube is, you know, the biggest, one of the biggest searches in the world. So your content, if you're publishing there, is searchable and you're going to get a lot more out of it, so.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Well, can I ask you an SEO question about YouTube?
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, of course.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: I'm curious, like, how, how important is YouTube and having the YouTube link to, let's say, your website or whatever, how important is it when it comes to the overall algorithm? Is it or they. Or should they be looked at completely separately?
[00:09:35] Speaker B: No, they're definitely, definitely tied together. When you want to think about stuff, change the mindset. We're. We're going to, we're going to be talking about CEO mindset, right? Think about search. Change your mindset. Search engine optimization. Like, I'm, I'm kind of throwing that out the window at this point because it's, it's really search everywhere. You got meta search, YouTube search, ChatGPT, perplexity, all these other platforms. And so we always think about Google as being like the search engine. And really it's like, how are you being found everywhere? And they all tie it together to some degree on how you're affected by that, like, what affects it. So where Google owns Google and YouTube, obviously YouTube is very closely tied to that. If you look at search results right now on Google, you'll have videos, you know, you'll have your paid results, organic results videos. People always ask Reddit, LinkedIn, all this other stuff. So they're constantly changing how that's laid out and they're pulling from other resources. And so what that means is if it's pulling videos in there, it feels it's important. If it pulls Reddit posts in there, it feels people's opinion on trusted resources is important. So you got to look at, from a law firm perspective, where am I putting my content out and what's my distribution look like and what's the strategy? YouTube is by itself A searchable platform that law firms can harness for localized search, which can lead to tons of cases, clicks to your website, all that stuff. I would say don't worry about as much as linking to your website and trying to make that cross. Like embed the videos on your website, use it there. But think about. People can find you right on YouTube instead of like having to go to YouTube and then click into your website. Like you can convert them right there on the YouTube video page with a number, with a track call rail number, call the office if you got questions about xyz, we can help you out. So just try to convert them right there. Google's going to give you reward for having the video content and then embedded on your website. And there's multiple ways they can, they can find you. So but I would just say change your mindset completely because people are going to ChatGPT. You know, what's the. What's the best personal injury firm? Columbia, Missouri. And it's going to. It's going to look at all kinds of other resources outside of Google's algorithm to draw its inclusion.
You need to start thinking about that.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: It's funny you say that because what we'll do is we'll test out things like that because we're trying to make sure that we're providing content that's fed into the LLMs. I can't search in my own account because it knows so much about me.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: That it'll just pull you up.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Well, the last time I did it it said. And I was doing it via voice and I said well I might be a little bit biased, you know. And they. So it even said that to me that. So I am, I am very curious what it would say if we did that because it's. We've been trying to target that. That's because it is important and I think your. Your thought about search everywhere is. Is so important because it is. It is one of those things where that's something that's changed over the last 15 years is just where is search. It used to. If you really think all the way back to like the. Is like. Like the three channels and then went to cable and now we're. Where we are today is where there's just so many different channels. It's crazy.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah. You know and I've man. I mean we do SEO and that's a big part of what we do.
Again that the E. We're changing the E. And so it's, it's really, you know, if we talk to like a law firm. It's like, where are they and where are they trying to go? And then what's the, what's the landscape look like from competition level? And then a newer firm may in cases outperform in areas. Some of these firms that have been around because if they've built all this content out that's really SEO'd content for, for in this old school tactics, they're getting beat up and hit hard and they have to fix and change all that years of buildup which is going to take a lot of time to do, or it's going to have a bad impact if they just delete it. So there's opportunities to come in and say, okay, with a clean strategy built right, we can potentially outperform some of the people that have deeper pockets. And then there's, you know, with ChatGPT or other kinds of search, you know, maybe you can't compete on Google and you want to look at these other channels that you maybe can't compete on. So it comes down to a lot of things. For one, law firms have to do a lot and it comes down to brand. If you have no brand, you're not recognized. All these things become harder. If you don't have hundreds of reviews and good star ratings, it's harder if you're not on traditional listings. ChatGPT doesn't, it can't look at Google reviews because there's no API integration because Google won't allow it. So it's using ab, it's using BBB and like avo and these things that we used to talk trash about, those are now being cited in reasons why you would call XYZ firm. So you know, you gotta take a step back and say, what should I be doing? And how does my strategy change? Because it's changing pretty rapidly.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it kind of annoys me that these, these ones that we did used to make fun of are now becoming more important. Just drives me nuts.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Well, again, you know, ChatGPT can't, if Google's like, nope, you can't access our reviews, then they're going to go find other ways to get it done. So it's, it's interesting to see where that's going. Now Gemini's out and that has tons of capability as well. But ChatGPT is, ChatGPT is still like widely the most used and it was adopted first. So I think it's gonna be hard to, to kind of put them out of their place. But so you know, just think about again, search everywhere and in social media is important. Brand's important. If your firm's not putting stuff out to the world, consistently telling the story about who you are and why you're good at what you, you, you know you're good at, then these programs have nothing to, they're not going to show you because they don't have anything to go on. So YouTube is important. LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Instagram is now indexable. So a lot of these programs are switching to being indexable content versus like Facebook, where if you're not my friend, you can't see my content.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: So yeah, I just think, you know, look at the whole strategy and areas that you're falling short or you're not contributing to and then just look at like a Google search page and like do like an informational query. It's just all kinds of different results that are coming. There's pulling from all these other sources.
Yeah, just writing a blog and doing content every month. That's not SEO.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Not anymore. Used to be at one point.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Used to be at one point. It's still important. It's, there's still places for it. I think it's, you know, you don't want to cut that stuff, but it's, it's so much less important. AI is answering the question. So if you want to write a blog about, you know, the statute of limitations in Missouri or what's the car seat or seat belt laws in Missouri, AI answers that instantaneously at the top of Google or ChatGPT, and it doesn't need your law firm to, to tell them the answer for that.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: So yeah, that is what's interesting to me is that you rarely will need to go to Google anymore.
It is going to, it's going to change the way people find lawyers. That's, it's already happening. I think YouTube is going to be something where you're going to go, okay, how do you do something? Or if you just want some sort of entertainment, I think that's kind of where that's headed. But when it comes to actual search, it's like, you know, if it's just a very specific question, like there's a lot of lawyer videos that are like, that's answering a very specific question that are on YouTube. I think those views are going to start to go away to a certain extent. I mean, not immediately in the future. Why not just go into ChatGPT, ask a simple question, get the answer right away as opposed to having to listen to a five minute video about, you know, X, Y and Z. It just doesn't make sense from a, from a, from a time standpoint, I can just, I can get the question in 10 seconds as opposed to, you know, watching five minute video.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Now the reality is ChatGPT is getting its original information, information from those kinds of sources. So it's still using websites and content that people have put out as its source to answer those questions. But at some point it won't need more of the answers. It's already got the answers. So again, there's still a place, but it's, it's much smaller. And if you're listening and you do SEO and I'm sure you spend a lot of money in it, the strategy should be focused on high intent, not questions and top funnel stuff that's, that's being answered by AI. So when someone does go, I need a lawyer in Columbia, Missouri, like your efforts would be focused on that and nothing else. And so you want the high intent that or you know, what we call commercial intent to hire. So just like if you do it on ChatGPT, what's the best personal injury attorney in X, Y, Z town? That's a pretty high intent. Like you're, you're seeking some referrals, right? The answer. And so who comes up at some point? And ChatGPT usually is about 3 to 4. Like there's the only ones that they're gonna reach out to because why would they go through the effort to say, well give me, give me six more? No, they're not gonna do that. No, not at all. And just like Google with a three pack for the maps, they give you three and then you can click more. No one's clicking more. So it's gonna be a fight, you know, it's gonna be interesting. But you know who's pivoting. I see tactics out there that are five, six years old by eight, my competitors, that is just sickening. And some of these firms are gonna start to, to feel a lot of pain at some point, don't you?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: At some point we'll get to our topic, but I, I think this is a fun conversation, but don't you think this is a, is a prime opportunity for the right firm to topple the big firms. So Morgan and Morgan, they're the big 800 pound gorilla, right? I feel like this is the right time for some upstart young, young upstart to come in because the tools are there to just dominate. Because what kind of what you're talking about too with you got like a Morgan of Morgan is got in or in St. Louis we got Brianna Croupin. They've got a bunch of that old content on their site, right. That's not necessarily targeted for the LLMs. You have these ll, maybe some of these new firms that they, they can create their websites and they can, they can pick off a bunch of those leads. I do think this is a really good time for moderately young firms to really take on those, those big firms.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: No, A hundred percent, 100% agree with you. I think it's easier than ever. The opportunity is there and I think. And then you, you, you have social too, which is like lawyers are getting cases from TikTok and Instagram and they're building followings and creating a brand identity in a year to be like millions of followers where it would take a firm two decades to do TV and radio and build like a, just a presence in one city or region. 100% never stop spending. They got to keep it going. So it's, it's no, there should be no complaints for anyone out there. It's like their tools are there, the opportunities are there. Google's losing some market share. These other tools have come about. You can streamline, automate and double down on everything. So I think it's just.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Who takes advantage of it. Omnipresence, right. Is, is very possible in what we're in. And YouTube is still massive. I got, there's a lawyer that I had on here a few months back, but he was making like $2 million a year from YouTube views and getting 50% of his cases from his videos, which are criminal defense videos. Talking about what if you got, you know, a gun charge? What do you do in Texas? And they're location based so they're very localized and so people find it, they call the number and they sign up from the video. But to your point earlier, like is that all those informational videos going to remain popular or that. Is that going to be answered by ChatGPT in two seconds?
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Well, if it's who, if it's who you're. I'm thinking of that you had on then probably yes for that individual because his videos are really, really entertain. It's funny because I've had guests on before where I, I had seen their actual videos. Cause I watched them. Cause I was just interested in their content. Not because I was looking for some lawyer. I actually saw their content. I thought it was interesting. And so I think it's going to be more of that, that the content has to be interesting, not just educational. It's got to have that entertainment value. Because if it doesn't have the entertainment value, then it's, I wouldn't say it's worthless, but it's will at some point become almost worthless.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you could probably find, you know, a hundred videos of the same answer by a hundred different lawyers. That sounds pretty much the same. So it's, yeah, there's, there's tons of basic, not unique stuff out there. But I will say this sad part of it is there's so many firms that haven't even done any video or barely have an updated website at all. Like I've seen the site the other day that was like 10 years old. Like it was insane. So it's like, and I don't think that's my audience, but it's literally like, hey, you don't have zero video, you've never done it before. You don't have Instagram or TikTok and trying to get them to even think about it. So while I think we're on the cutting edge of things and there's opportunity, I also see people are so far behind that it's going to take a while.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: So true.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: It's crazy. I'm surprised every day. So. But that's why they need to be in masterminds and get in the groups and talk to the lawyers and change their mindset and start running a business instead of trying to be a better lawyer. Yeah, you're not going to be the best lawyer in the world. You're not going to be the best at everything. And I think, you know, having, having that decision point where am I running a business or am I going to be a better lawyer? Maybe I got a partner and they want to be the lawyer and I can be the business owner.
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[00:22:43] Speaker A: It reminds me that Sally Hogshead quote, different is better than better because and yet most likely you are not going to be the best lawyer. Now I think I do still think it's really, really important that you are a good lawyer and you're good at what you do when it comes to Actually getting more cases and getting more clients. A lot of times it has to do with being the whole. Different is better than better is being different, and that's it. And so people, they complain all the time because, oh, this, this new lawyer is getting all these new cases. Well, you know what? They're different. They're doing something different. And they're. And it has. A lot of times it doesn't have to do with whether or not you are better. It's. Did you focus on that potential client's needs or did you focus on yourself? Because a lot of it has to do with attorneys running ego advertising, where they make it all about themselves. Okay. That doesn't. That doesn't tell them what they're the potential client, what you could do for them. That just says, okay, great, you're good. We all know that. That should be the bottom threshold. You're good at your job. Now, how are you different and how are you able to attract that client to. And tell them, explain to them how you are going to benefit them? And that's the part where I think a lot of law, they miss out on.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah, if I had a nickel for hearing, because I have a lot. I have a lot of friends that reach out and they. They want to figure out what we do, if we can help them. And I'm saying, you know, there's a lot we can't or we don't. We don't help. But. Yeah. I don't know how many times. Yeah. The solo lawyer in a town, not a big market. Right. Just in a town where, like, I know everyone. I got the experience. They. This other firm, they just popped up and they shouldn't be getting these cases. They shouldn't be getting this and that. I'm the best at DUI cases. I can settle them every single time. And they're just telling you this, and you're like, yeah, okay, okay, whatever. They're getting the clients because those clients are finding them and they're conveying why they're different. And they're speaking to that client. This is the client's needs. Right. And you have done nothing to argue yourself or stand out. So while you might be the best in the world, no one knows about you, so it doesn't matter. And then it comes down to all the stuff you're just saying. It's the whole thing. It's not a piece here and there is everything.
Your people are your. Your. Your marketing. Your culture is your marketing, your processes is your marketing, how you do business, how good a lawyer you are, all that stuff is, is your marketing. And so when someone calls your firm interactions, your firm signs up for your firm all the way through to giving you a referral or leaving review. You have to map all that out and you have to get it, you know, improve it over time. But, you know, just being a good lawyer is not good enough.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: That could have said it better myself.
Yeah, that's, to me, that's like the bottom threshold. Okay, you're a good lawyer. I think do, I think, I do think people, when they're looking for a lawyer and whatever it is, let's say it's a personal injury, they are going to automatically assume that you know what you're doing. That's the bot. So that's the bottom threshold. And hopefully you are really good at your job. And that's something that I, I think we need to probably stress a little bit more as a profession is, yeah, you need to do, you need to be great at your job. But again, that's from a marketing standpoint, that's the bottom threshold. You got to know how, you got to know what you're doing, but you, you have to be able to communicate that to these people so that they know why you're the better lawyer and why they should hire you over someone else. You've got to be able to convey that to them in the right way, 100%.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: And I think you could be the best lawyer. Tyson's, he's the best PI attorney in the state of Missouri, but he hasn't taken time to put processes in place. He hasn't taken time to handle his schedule or have automation or have follow ups or hire staff to take care of the client's. When he's not there, he's in court. And so it's a big mess. And so there's bad communication. The client doesn't know what's going on and they're scared, they're worried, they don't know what's going on with the case, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's the best lawyer, right? So all those things lead to your clients having a bad experience. Bar complaints, all kinds of other stuff, issues with his staff, all these things, right. So if you're not fixing those things and growing your firm, you're doing a disservice to all these people, regardless if you're a good lawyer. Because those are things they shouldn't have to experience. Right.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: This makes me think of this experience I had like 12 years ago and I was, I did a favor. It was one of the three family law cases I ever did, did and I did a favor for a friend of mine. I remember when we left the, the truth of the matter is I probably got completely hosed on the deal. It probably got completely hosed. My client probably got completely hosed because I know injury, I don't know family law. I remember leaving and their client was screaming at them as we left out in the, outside the courtroom. And my client was like hugging me and gave me a five star Google review. And it was one of those things where it has to do with like all the other stuff. A lot of it has to do with all the other stuff, right? It not necessarily what you did in the courtroom. A lot of it has to do with the. Okay, how did your, how did your, your people interact with them? Like you were saying, how did you, how did you make them feel? Right? You talk like the whole no, like trust factor.
And when, like in really, how did, how did they, how were they left feeling? And if they left feeling sour and upset and mad, well then you're likely going to get a one star Google review. But it is interesting how it's not always whether or not you did a good job. Sometimes it doesn't have to do with that, but it still doesn't change the fact that you should at least know what you're doing.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah, you could, you could go to a restaurant, right? And the food's not good, but the server was over the top, amazing, super nice, catered to you, tried to make it right, apologize for it, but did whatever they could. Are you going to not give them a tip? You might be upset with the, maybe their back at the house or the restaurant, the chef, but if the waitress blew you away the whole time with the experience, you know, you probably more or less feel bad for her and she did everything that you possibly could. So you're gonna leave a good, a good tip anyway. And so that's kind of the way to think about it. Like the food wasn't great, but the experience and the service was, was top notch. Right. And so just that's the way, one way to think about it, I guess. But a lawyer of the section next door to us, I won't say his name, but he had an assistant, I think it's been 25 years. Had an assistant for 15. She left. So now it's him, no assistant. And she knew everything. And I walked over to see him one night, he's like scrambling late night, he's still there.
He's like, I can't find anyone to do this work. And no one wants to do the work and no one wants to have a job. And it's like, you know, the knowledge that she had and took with her, it's going to. He's had to hire three or four people probably. Um, and, and he's, you know, he's an older guy. He's been doing it for a long time. Didn't build, didn't get processes in place, relat on one person and expected them to never leave. And they probably had no real growth in their career because he wasn't growing. So he did her disservice and now he's left right back where he was when he started.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: For those of you listening, I'm just shaking my head because that is what a scary situation to be in. Like, just going from like the person that has all that.
That knowledge just gone and it's gone forever. You're never going to get it back unless you can talk her into documenting those processes, which she's probably not going to do. I mean, that's, that's terrifying to me.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah, unfortunately right now. Yeah, I hear that story sometimes, of course. And I have a lot of people that reached out that want us to help them with marketing and they're in that kind of spot. I'm down to one person, how to lay people off. Can you help me, you know, get car accident cases in XYZ market? It's like, you know, how much your budget? Well, I used to have a big budget, but not anymore. It's like they're, they're, they're stuck, they're screwed. There's nothing they can do because it is very competitive, obviously in car accidents. And they always don't understand because they used to rank and they used to get all these leads and they used to this and they used to that and they rested on the laurels at some point and now they're. I have a lot of older attorney folks that I know that basically have to hang it up, retire early and hopefully they have some, some money set aside. But this is. Every week I'm talking to these folks about this stuff.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that is interesting to me. I would, I don't know if I'd call it a trend, but there is, there is a select few that they, they've had success and then they just kind of get comfortable and they don't do, they don't do anything to change at all. And then next thing you know, they start. It's. It's like when they start to see their their revenue slide. But it's almost like that's too late because it, the slide happens pretty quickly and to correct it can take. Can take a lot of work, depending on what they have and haven't done.
But it, it's gotta be a terrifying because it's like the top of the roller coaster, only it's not a roller coaster. It's not entertaining. It's. It's worse. You know, it's bad. And so you're going downhill pretty quickly and you're trying to. So your revenues are going down. You're. I mean, maybe you have to lay off staff. I think it gets real bad whenever at home you're having to pay yourself less money even though you've got a lot of, you know, maybe your kids are going to college. So it's just one of those things where you've. I mean, I've seen, I've seen it quite a bit and it's. It's got to be a scary time. Really scary.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: It's terrible. I mean, and I want to help as many people as I can with that situation.
And it sometimes just, it does. There's no. The math doesn't make sense, but.
So you try to guide them, tell them what they need to do, what they can do. And a lot's going to be on them to like hustle automate, put in time. You know, whether they're making videos or content, whatever they're going to do. But they, they can't hire an agency or someone like us to, to do it at the scale they would need to. They're going to have the problem you.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Mentioned is a real problem.
Yeah. Because they've got a high overhead. Right. And so they don't have that extra money because the revenues are down. So they don't have the extra money to hire a company like you. They just don't. And so. And they've probably, they probably haven't hustled in 10 years or more. Like, you know, the hustle hustle like you did early in the career. And so you're in a real bad spot where now you've, you pick your, your hours have increased substantially. You feel like you're late making less money.
Okay, what do you do from this point? Because you're going to have to make some really, really tough decisions. That's not. Everybody has the, the hutzpah to, To. To make some of those decisions.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of them are. They're grasping for like a magic bullet or something that's going to save the day or whatever. But I think, you know, back to mindset, a lot of it comes down to that because a lot of these same folks will be like, well you know, well you know, that's kind of starts a lot of conversations. I got these bad reviews, but these people didn't know what they were talking about or you know, this new firm came around and they got all these reviews and I don't believe any of them are real. And, and so I talked to a firm owner soldier that get it. They have acquisition processes for reviews, they have intake, they have sales, they have, you know, customer journey or client journey. I mean they measure all this stuff, right? Difference than the ones I'm talking about. But they like to blame, well, that lady that left me, that one star, she didn't know what she's talking about, whatever, you know. And so, and I go, listen, it doesn't matter like you got to get that up or you're never going to win. And so you can do something about it or you can about, you know, why you got it like, but you can't change. It's public. You're going to be screwed by that. And they're like, well I can never get a five star. My clients, I ask them, they, they don't do it yet. These other firms have hundreds or thousands in a very short amount of times. It's you just, you can't hide behind all that crap. You gotta figure it out. There's ways to get this stuff done. And I saw some of these like hey dude, people call and they're not the right fit. Yeah, all the time. I get the wrong leads. Did you help them out? Did you tell em what they could do or that they don't have a case and they could, they could try to this instead? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the time, all day. They can give you a review. They interact with your law firm. You gave them advice, you pointed them in a different direction, asking for a review. You have to find a way to build your reputation back up and get some edge. But you're going to have to put the work in. No one's going to do it for you.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: And so let's stay on the, the, the mindset part of it, right? So you've got a lot of attorneys. What they'll do is they're, they've got their team, but they won't rely on their team. They've got to do everything, everything themselves. They won't trust their team to make mistakes. If the team does make mistake, they'll just they're on their back, they're down their throat about it. And when you do that, you do a lot of harm. So instead of you asking for those Google reviews, your team can do it. They can easily do it. You just gotta let them do it. You gotta actually let them go out, ask those questions, train them to ask those questions and let them do it and, and really delegate a lot of those tasks as opposed to you doing them. Because every time you don't do it, you've now you don't lower their confidence. They feel like they can't do it because only you can do it. Or if you're, I mean, I completely understand whenever you want to get onto someone, if they've made a mistake, I get it. But the reality is that you gotta, you have to almost encourage mistakes so that they can build the confidence and knowing that they, that you trust that they can do it. Otherwise, if they're afraid to pull that trigger, they're always going to come back to you. They're always going to come back to you and ask you questions and you're going to get stuck in this just whole loop where every time something comes up, they come back to you. Right. And every time they come back to you, you have to answer a question. Now you've lowered their confidence because you never trusted in them as opposed to you just saying, what do you want to do about it? And oh, you know what, the decision you made on that was a really good, good job, keep it up. But like, from a mindset standpoint, there's a lot of harm that law firm owners do by not trusting their team to do certain things. You got to let go, you've got to let go of a lot of those things and trusting your team to do it because that is how you're going to get out of that rut. If you're in that rut, or let's say your things are going well for you right now, the way you're going to throw gasoline on that and really just explode and do a great job is by letting your team make those decisions and get out of their way and let them make those decisions. You just get out of the way.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's hard for any business owner in the beginning to, especially if you're like in your passionate and lawyers specifically like this is what you do. You are a lawyer, which is a lot different than a lot of other crafts, I think in positions. So I think it's a lot harder for lawyers to let go than other types of business owners. Plus they're still practicing. Like I don't do marketing, I don't do any SEO. I don't write content, I don't do any of it. But in the case of like a lawyer, like you're still a lawyer in most cases now. I know, I know some that don't do it at all. They just run the business.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, okay. So I've been thinking about that quite a bit lately because that's, that's the excuse I hear quite a bit. Or you hear people saying that you have to, you know, you've got to have someone that is like running the firm than someone that is actually like running the cases. I think there is a lot of truth to that. But if I was thinking about Steve Jobs recently, right. Steve Jobs until the day he died was involved very in, in all the details of how the IPH was made. Everything when it comes to all the computer like all the design. He was, he, he was stayed up to speed on all the new technology and all that. I don't think that that's really any different than being a law firm owner and a practicing lawyer really. Don't he. Sure. He, he was running a massive company. I, I don't think it was the, the biggest company in the world, but it was one of the top what, 15 companies in the world.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Real close.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: Very, very. A huge company. But he also knew all the intricacies of how the iPhone worked, how the ipod worked, how the IMAC worked, the MacBook, the iPad, all of these different things. He knew he was, he was super involved in all that. So the people that tell me that, you know, give those excuses to me, I think just look at Steve Jobs. I think that that is absolutely crazy. You can, you can certainly do both. You can run a massive company and still get into all the details. Another thing too is like I also to, to run a really successful law firm, I also think you really need to know really well what it's like to be a good lawyer for. I'll use, I'll use Morgan Morgan again because I think, I do think they're a really good model. I bet John Mor, he really does know a lot of the high end top techniques when it comes to personal injury. I bet he really does. But he also has some really good lawyers. He understands the business part of it like the legal side of the business. I think he truly does probably really understand that side because I've seen him speak a lot about just personal injury law in general. So I think you do have to be really successful. I do think a part of it. Even if you are the CEO type, the type that's running the firm. Yeah. I think you still really do need to understand how the cases work, because if you don't, you're going to. The techniques change over time. They really do. Like, personal injury techniques over the last 15 years have changed to me, in my opinion, substantially. And if you don't understand that, you're not going to understand the business.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: No, I totally agree. Like, for me, I'm. Again, I don't do the work, but I'm constantly educating myself or talking to my team. I made eight videos this morning on different SEO stuff and all the changes, all new stuff, AI and platform stuff we were talking about in the beginning, like, it's constantly new stuff. If we just stuck with what we were doing, we'd be dead in the water. So, yeah, I think it's. You need to be in the weeds a little bit. You need to understand. And as the leader, you know, your team needs to know that, you know, you're down. You can get down there with them and like, and be there and do the same work if you had to. Right. So I definitely think that's important. It's, you know, some of the things I see, it's like the delegation is hard. Kind of back to that. And I have a younger. Two younger attorneys that are clients of ours. They do criminal defense, and they're doing pretty good. They're growing pretty good, but they still.
You had to delegate a lot and hire people. And he was in. I had a mastermind call not too long ago, and he's like, hey, what is everyone using for, like, for assistance? Or like, you know, he's like, I spent three hours this morning calling a court just to let them know that I could be there if I was needed, because my client was there that turned himself in for like a criminal case. And they were like, you spent three hours doing what? It's like. And so, you know, the whole room went around the table like, you know, having like, assistance AES and like, you know, South America or. And they were just kind of like, wait, what you can do? I can have them call the court for me. And they're like, yeah, they can do all kinds of stuff like that. And so they just haven't delegated anything. They're doing it all themselves. And so, you know, to me. And you'd be like, that's insane. But it's just these are newer firms that I. That are still kind of fallen into this trap, if you will. So it's. You think something that you know has been taught enough, but it's. That's what the podcast is about. That's what your group's all about. You know, it's just constant. Like, who doesn't know all these things yet? We got to get the word out.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that is kind of. Kind of how I feel sometimes. Like, like, man, I want to help you so badly. Like, but there's all these things you got to do, and it's that. That, That's. That's part of it, too. You gotta. You gotta figure out what your priorities are. And that. I. I think that's something I've learned over the years, is that. Okay, there's always a lot to do. There's always gonna be a lot to do. Okay, what is the thing right now that's the most important? Where are the spots we're weak on right now? Okay, let's focus on that, and let's. Let's really, over the next quarter, let's work on that thing. Let's get that thing done, then move on to the next thing. And that's, I think, a really valuable lesson is just figuring out what the most important thing is right now for you to get done. Focus on that one thing, get it done, and then move on to the next thing. Instead of. Instead of working on 20 different things at the same time, you won't get any of them done. Focus on that one thing, get it done, then move on to the next thing.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a book somewhere, but it's like. It's a book. I think it's called, like, the Next Thing or something like that. Anyway. Yeah. So anyone listening? The Success and me, my partner, we've read books, we've been in groups, and everybody's looking for that one thing. What's the secret to skip everything? And the secret is doing a lot of things good and continuing constantly. Right? So it's a lot of things. You know, you have. You like the book traction. You follow that book or eos, you know, so you, you know, you have admin and billing and things like that. You have your people, you have your marketing sales. Like, then you're all those things. You have to do good at all those things. It's overwhelming to think about all those things, and you can't operate that way. So you have to look what's in front of me. What's the most important thing to work on right now? Let's make that our quarterly goal. Let's address that thing, then we can move on to the next thing. And so I think. I think that's the biggest challenge is if you go tell someone all the things they gotta do, they're gonna go and do nothing. Cause they're gonna be completely overwhelmed. And so I think that's the power of, like, conferences, books, your group is if you can pick up one thing for a session or a conference, and you come back and apply that and. And you. You're winning right there. Right? So.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yes. So something I always try to tell people whenever we're at one of our masterminds, like, we just got done in New York City a couple weeks ago, and you're gonna. I always tell people you're gonna take a bunch of notes. Right. But when you're done, pick one or two things that you want to accomplish. Just circle them in your notebooks. Do just one or two, nothing more than that, and focus on those things before you do anything else. Because what a lot of people will do, they'll go to a conference or go to a mastermind, write down a billion different things, and won't do anything with them. Just instead, just pick one or two things, focus on those, get those things done, and you'll be making a lot of progress. You'll be making a lot more progress than 90% of the people.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Also, if you come back from a conference. I've done this plenty of times. And you go, hey, team, I'm back from a conference. And then you're, like, blowing everything up, and you're like, we gotta change all this stuff. They get frustrated, they get pissed, and they're like, oh, crap, you know, Kevin went to a conference. What's he gonna come back with? So, you know, think about that too. But give it to, like, your team. Or it's just, hey, what out of this stuff should we focus on? We need to pick two. Let get them involved, like, and say. And they might go, wow, that would be amazing if we could do that. Okay, cool. Let's. Let's put that on the list and then have someone that's responsible to maybe go through that list for the next, you know, the next priority things to do versus, like, sticking it in your drawer. And then you forget all about it until you get to a conference next time. So.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: But get your team involved. I think, you know, they're usually more concerned when you go to a conference because they know the owner's gonna come back or the. The leader with a whole bunch of stuff to implement but they should be more excited to, to see what you came back with.
The other thing I'll add too, just real quick is if you don't delegate and you're just constantly coming back in and trying to do things yourself or you're not going to have a team because they're going to leave, they're not going to stick around. People want place they want to be. They want someone that they want to follow and grow with. They want to know that they're going to have a career and a opportunity to grow in that career. So if you're not delegating, you're not growing, then what's in it for them?
[00:44:04] Speaker A: So well said, well said.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: You're going to end up with the guy over there that lost his assistant after 15 years, you know, you know, what was her, what was her, you know, what was her career path? You know, assistant for 25 years.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: He's lucky she stuck around that long.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: It sounds like, yeah, nice guy, doesn't matter. You don't, you don't set them up for, for opportunity. You know, for us here, we're always growing and then one of our things is, you know, to grow to a hundred million dollar, you know, company so that we can provide unlimited opportunities. It's not a monetary goal as much it is. No one can grow and lead and build teams if, if we're just stagnant. So, you know, if you're a, if you're an intern today, you could be the CEO in five years. We got plenty of people here that have moved up in positions and built teams and huge opportunities.
That's kind of the mindset we have for sure.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: It's always a, it's always a good feeling. I always like whenever people are promoted. It's such a cool feeling. I love it so much. Just such a really cool thing to see people be able to advance. It's awesome.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: And everyone has different wants and needs in this.
It could be money, security, right? It could be they just like to do what they do. They don't necessarily want to lead people. I've had that before where I'm like, I can't wait to promote you. And we're going to build a team under you. And they're like, I don't want to do that. I just want to do my thing. Okay, cool, well, let's make you the best of that thing possible.
So I think the other thing is understanding what their individual goals are and actually having that conversation, like, what is your monetary goal? Like money wise, what is, you know, Your professional goal? What's your personal goals? And like, okay, can we align with those goals and help you meet those goals? And if you can't, then maybe they should be doing something else and that's totally fine.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that's something. Luckily, we have a really good office administrator, Kristen, where she, she reaches out on a regular basis to make sure that, you know, people are, you know, see how they're doing. And she's great about keeping track of what's going on in their personal lives and everything. She's, she's fantastic at that. I think that's a really, it's an overlooked part and she does a really good job of reporting back to such and such is having a really tough week. You might want to reach out to them or this is such and such as, you know, like, we talk about anniversaries, birthdays coming up, all kinds of stuff to celebrate, things like that. So just.
But checking on them, see how they're like, actually caring how they're doing is, I think that's really important.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's just easy to get caught up in the freaking day, right? And yeah, work, they work in front of you and that, that's priority usually. So that's, that's easy to be like, oh, well, everything's cool. And oh, where, where'd that person go? Why'd they leave? You know, it's like, well, because, you know, there's all these things that we never addressed or talked to them about. Okay, didn't know that. So. Yeah, it's. Growing a company's hard. There's a lot of responsibilities and things you gotta do. And I think a lot of it comes down to process. Right. If you had a process for that versus you're just winging it and like. Well, let me check in with Tyson randomly, see how he's doing. Build a process around it. Check INS1 on ones, you know.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Well, those are actually, those are built into her KPIs too, where she, she's required to reach out to so many per month. And so that's. That's.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: You're right. You gotta build it in the process. And so that's one of the ways we do it to make sure that it's. Because it is one of those things that's really important. It's built in something she has to do.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Ben, I love that we don't have someone like, like a position like that. That's awesome. We have people that probably could take that responsibility, though. That's I never even heard that before. But yeah, if it's built in the process, just like how a client comes into your firm and their whole journey, that can be processed out. It's intentional.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Always bake it in.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's intentional. And that's how you get all the results of the firms that are winning. You know, they're not winging nothing. They have a plan.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Nothing at all.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: And then you can tweak the plan and find out areas that is that it's not working.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: I do have to run in a. In a minute or so.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: That's totally cool.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: We've been chatting for a long time. It's. It's been a good combo.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: This will be a good long episode for everyone to listen to. We'll make and we'll split it up in two episodes. But. Well, Tyson, I know you gotta go. I appreciate the chat. We covered a lot of things.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Yes, we did. It's been fun, though. I enjoyed it.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: It's all important stuff and I appreciate the candor and conversation. What's the best way for people to check you out, find you? And also you have an event coming up in the fall.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: Yeah, probably the best wayertyson on all of. All of the socials. You reach them out there or.
Yeah. MaxLawcon.com the conference is coming up in October, so love to have you all out there. I think you're going to try to make it out there, which would be awesome to hang out with you, but yeah. Maxlocon.com it's. It's gonna be in Nashville in October, so it's gonna be great place to have it. It's gonna be. The weather's gonna be beautiful. But otherwise, if you want to reach out, having questions, you listen to the podcast Maxim Lawyer or just reach out to me at Lawyer.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Tyson, man, I appreciate you being on. I'll be the conference. That's the plan. Never been in Nashville. Looking forward to it. So everyone out there, join me, come on out. If you got questions about it, we'll pop a link for registration and get you hooked up. So, Tyson, thank you so much, man.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Kevin. I really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun, I think. I think you and I could have gone three hours. So if I didn't have a heart out, then I would definitely would do it.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: But I bought him 25 minutes.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Love chat with you, man.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: All right, I'll see you soon. Stick on just so it uploads, everyone. Thank you so much as always. See you soon.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Sam.
