Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And EOS in particular is really good at helping entrepreneurial companies, smaller companies kind of like just break through a lot of the barriers and like feelings that you run into as you're growing a business.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: What's going on, everyone? Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for joining us on the show. If you listen often, I really appreciate it today I have a friend in the industry here. We got Brendan Chard on the show.
Uh, he owns the Modern Firm and they do a lot of the same things that we do here at Array Digital, helping law firms with their websites and marketing.
But we also are a little bit different. But we're here to share today together, just talking shop, talking, you know, running our agencies and the ins and outs of those things. But as it applies to running a law firm as well and how. I think it's very similar and the things that we have to do to be successful and run a good agency and have a good company and all this good things. So. But Brendan, first, I'll let you have a chance to introduce yourself, but welcome to the show.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me here again. Yes, I said I'm Brendan. I own the Modern Firm and we've been in business for 20, 23 years now, I think. And we, we work, like I said, do a lot of the same things, you know, branding, websites, content, digital marketing for law firms, but we really, we focus exclusively on solo and small firms. So that's sort of a differentiator with us is love working with, with smaller firms. So. But yeah, it's been fun to have our friendship grow and talk shop and look forward to this.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Brenda's just been a gentleman and while we, you know, we help some, some smaller firms, you know, our ideal clients, larger firms and more competitive markets, you know, more established and you know, four or five plus attorneys and up and, and, and Brandon doesn't focus on that. So it's, it's a great little partnership. And he's, he sent us some good referrals and I appreciate that. He also sent me some awesome coffee from Ann Arbor and man, that's some good stuff. I appreciate you sending that over.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah, once I heard what you were drinking, I had to send it over.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: And so Brendan's been on the show probably almost a year ago. We taught shop a little bit too. But I think it's, it's great to, you know, for law firm owners listening. You've been through many agencies, you've probably worked with a handful. If you've been around a while, you might have had in house, people, you've, you've probably seen it all. And I just think, you know, it's just natural. Law firm's gonna kind of go through their different phases and hopefully, hopefully you find a good partner, someone that can, can help you with this kind of work. If you're starting out, you know, me or Brennan, 100% will share anything openly about what you should do, what you need to do, what's the most effective and efficient with the budget you might have at the time. So I would encourage, reach out to any one of us. We're going to point you in the right direction, and that's what we're all about, and that's why we're sharing it together.
Where most competitors wouldn't want to get on the same show together and promote one another whatsoever anyway. But today we're going to be talking about a couple different things as it relates to us running our agencies. I'm. I'm about 20. I'm 20 years in owning my own agency and 23. Brendan. Right. So we're, we're kind of. We're kind of right there seeing a lot of the same stuff. And yeah, I just want to kind of share, like, our perspective on things and, you know, running a good agency, which again, it's very applicable to, are applicable to a law firm. And I learn a lot from my law firm owners and other podcast guests as well, like what they're doing to grow their firms, whether it's process or culture or sales, marketing, whatever, I can pick up a lot of what they're doing and apply it to my business as well. But Brendan, he is, you know, we're going to kind of touch on core values. We're going to talk about, you know, scorecard tracking, know, KPIs, but then also being on a system or having a system in place. And I'll let Brendan, you know, kick off. Maybe we'll talk about that first. But you're on eos?
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, we, we run the business on EOS a little over a year into it right now, so really over the hump of a lot of the process of getting that stuff implemented. For those that don't know, you know, EOS is.
It's called an operating system for your business, you know, but it's not operating in the sense that it's like software. It's more like a methodology and a way of conducting the business. And EOS in particular is really good at helping entrepreneurial companies, smaller companies kind of like just break through a lot of the barriers and like feelings that you run into as you're growing a business and the things that, like, as you get going, like I, I still work in my garage. This is my garage basements. It's the stuff that, you know, that you, you don't think about when you're just getting a business off the ground. And it really helps you learn from the, you know, thousands that have come before you how to tackle a lot of these things and get systems in place so that the business can scale and thrive. And so that's eos. What you run on a system as well? Kevin?
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, we're on. Well, we're, we're like a modified EOS is what we like to say. So it's, we've.
My business partner is actually in EO Entrepreneurs Organization and EOS stands for Entrepreneurs Operating System, which was the Vern Harnish, the book Traction references.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Gina Wickman.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah, Gina Wickham. So, yeah, we, we read all those books, my Megan being an EO and been in the workshops to learn EOS and all that stuff for years actually. I know a lot of law firm owners that, that run on eos and guess what? They're all the most successful ones I know for the most part. So, so yeah, if you don't, yeah. If you don't have if.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: You're either bootstrapping, right? You're, you're gonna figure out, you could read all these books and, you know, figure out processes put in place and how you want to do it and, and figure out each element of your business. You know, admin and finance, sales, marketing operations or, you know, EOS is really a system to follow and something to put in place versus trying to again, bootstrap it all yourself.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah. What I thought was interesting and that I'm looking forward to get into with you is yeah, we have a number of clients that run on a system and several that run on EOs, but many are too small. Small or it's just with whatever the structure is of the business. It doesn't quite fit with those sorts of systems. But there are lessons that have been picked up along the way that seem universal to all businesses. Even though like we're going to be cherry picking and talking about a few things that are like part of a larger system, when you're sort of maybe working through that process still stuff that as it you hear and you're like, yes, it should definitely be doing that or that that should be helpful. And so I'm excited to be, you.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Know, sharing that yeah, you know, I've run traction a few times and every time I read it, I'm like, there's another thing we didn't do or we didn't have time to do or apply. And, you know, you can go back through that stuff and just constantly find little nuggets to improve and make changes. And, you know, that's just business right there. It's constant change and trying to make it better.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: And that's with most, most things that you're successful at. It's always like, what's, what's the secret to business? A lot of things. A lot of done. A lot of things done right over time and lessons learned. That's it.
There's no silver bullet.
So I don't know if you want to back it up. I mean, obviously Brendan, he's like, hey, here's, here's some things I'm, I want to talk.
He mentioned Core values, which I'm very passionate about, and something that we've kind of taken to the next level here at my firm. So I can definitely sit here and talk about that all day and then we'll get into, you know, tracking and scorecards and things like that. I'm really interested to hear Brendan's, what he's doing there because I think we're doing it different, but I think we can, you know, everyone listening, kind of learn the different ways that we're doing it and kind of paint a picture for what might work best for them.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, want to start with Core Values.
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[00:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah, let's start with core values. Let's kick it off. Honestly, I think, you know, everything stems from that. And I used to not believe that and thought that core values were this, like, fluffy, kind of nice to have kind of, you know, not necessary bs.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Like a corporate, big corporation has core values in their comments.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Same. I felt the same way. Yeah. I can tell you with us, I'm interested to see, like, some of the process that you went through and especially, like, talking about as you've been taking these things to the next level. But I can tell you with us that the core values has been huge, and we operated for a couple decades without them written down.
They were there, but more like, they were more internalized to me. And things that people sort of, like, got through osmosis, you know, by, like, oh, well, this is how Brendan operates. This is how this. This stuff goes.
By going through the process of, like, defining what they were. It was like they. It then assigned those things to the business as an entity. And so now it was no longer about, like, oh, well, what's Brendan think? Or how does he feel about that? It's like, this is what the company stands for, and these are things that, you know, employees, but also, you know, clients can see that we're always measuring ourselves against. And where it was surprising for me was just in all of these, like, I don't know, intangibles. And maybe I don't even know the best way to describe it. It was just, I guess all these little aha moments where you're like. Because, you know, as you're hiring people and working with folks, you might have something that's not sitting right in your gut, and you're like, it. Something's off here with this relationship, or, like, how it's. How it's going with this person. And now you can just. It's one of the things we do regularly now just, you know, roll through the core values and be like, that's what's going on. They're. Yeah, they've been given pushback on, you know, you know, us rolling out this new stuff. And one of our core values is that we're always evolving. And so that's, you know, that's. That's why my gut feels weird is it is. It's, you know, it sort of gives you that list to check against it, but then it facilitates the conversation with the person.
And they might be like, oh, yeah, you're right. You know, whatever, you know, but you can't really surface it when you just say, like, something feels weird. In my stomach.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: No, it really. I mean, it really gives you, like you said, to check by and to go through. If you go back to your core values, like, you literally have them nailed and you. You live by them, it becomes pretty. Pretty quick to run through them. And sometimes it just. You automatically know, right, that that's a. A core value that's clearly not. It's either being broken or they don't support it. And that's easy to make a decision from there. You know, we hire and fire. We hire and fire by our core values. And so that's. That's pretty much it. So, yeah, I mean, for us, you know, you said it was a few decades. For us, it was. I mean, for me, it was probably like eight to nine years. And my business partner, Eric, when I met with him to form this company, he kind of had some. But they were, like, really loose, and they were. They weren't even core values. They're almost like minimum requirement, like, to be a human. It was, you know, he. He was just trying to. He was just trying to be like, I. You can't not be honest or you can't not be certain things. And so I was like, oh, core values, okay. He was like, yeah, we have the score of values. And.
And so. But through eo, we actually did a workshop. We were doing traction. And it was like, on people day, so they, like, each quarter, they hit each area of your business, people, they had the cash day. They had, you know, operations today, whatever. So people day, they're like, okay, we gotta do core values workshop. And so we did it live with, you know, 30 or 40 other business owners. And I'm like, nailed this one. We already have these, you know, until they start to go, okay, read off your core values. And then everyone around the room starts going, that's kind of dumb. Like, yeah, obvious. Like, how do you. You know. So they started to question our core values.
And then through that, that exercise, we came out with some edited core values, if you will. And I would say it took about two to three years of really understanding ourselves, who we wanted to hire and passed ourselves, you know, with the ones we just came up with, till we really locked in our core values. It probably took two or three years. And they haven't changed, you know, for probably five or six years since we did that.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, their core.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a process. I would say if one says you can't ever change your core values because you set them once.
You gotta. You gotta explore them, you gotta put them to the test. And honestly, I think as you evolve, they're probably not gonna be the same as when you started by yourself, had them then to where, you know, now you have a team and you have all these things in place and you've, you've kind of found your way.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Revisit them, but to the test.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, you had a lot of good points there too. And especially, you know, it's not only with, you know. Yeah. Sort of hiring, firing, promoting, sort of based around them beyond the hiring point. That's, that's been an interesting one to, you know, to have those handy and to introduce those right away into the hiring process even in our job descriptions so that folks can self select and just know right out of the gate, you know, what we, what we stand for. And it's. That's helped to. Led to better, better candidates, less filtering that we have to do. And again, sparked some really nice conversations as, as our teams continue to grow.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, with hiring them, for sure, it's like, you know, you speak to those. The first are up front on. Yeah. On a position. They're up on there. They're on our website. But we actually like speak to them in interviews and, and what they really mean and how we like implement them and live by them and it sets kind of the tone for like, hey, you're coming into something different here. And if they have any problems or we see any issues with them living up to this core values, then that's, that's a pretty easy decision to make. They could be super skilled and cocky about it and not interested to share or be transparent. Transparency is one of our core values. They're not getting a job here. Right. So we don't care about skill as much as we do the person and their ability to work with the team and share and grow.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah. To sort of close out that point there, unless you have more to share on. Core values is.
You know, I think about a lot of our clients where they're going through that process of hiring, like their first or second employee. And sometimes it's really hard to, to know where. I mean, you're just scrambling so much. So then to sit there and think about something, it's like sort of eyebrow sounding as core values. Seems like I'm just breathing.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: I think we're good.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but like you mentioned, you know, the core values that you sort of absorbed when you joined with your partner, you know, a lot of them are just sort of like. Right. Just. Just table sticks. Like. Well, like These are no duh. Like, yes, of course you need show.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Up on time to the office.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Show up. Yeah, exactly. And so, but that is a common mistake. You just so, especially when you're hiring the first people you might, you know, have some doubts about. Like, like who would want to work for me? Or like what are, you know, do I have this together enough? But take a little time to, to think about those and to make sure that they're really, really solid, really reflective. Definitely just helps make some of those, helps make those decisions.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I would, I would challenge anyone to flip it around because I've also start another business right now, today.
I would start with core values. I would put them in place and it. You, I think you just gotta lean into it and be like, listen, I'm not the best or in the best spot or maybe I'm not the.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: The.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Worst, you know, the, the best agency or the best lawyer at this. I'm just starting. Just own it. Hey, we got core values is what we live by. Like, well, it's just you, Kevin. Doesn't matter. Here's where we're starting at. And so having that structure, I think if you had the wherewithal and just get it in place and just own it and say, yeah, it might be kind of corny because it's just me and we're just starting and I'm just trying to hire my first assistant. Put it in place anyway, you know, learn it from me and Brendan. Took years or decades to kind of come around to it. You know, you can be way ahead by just saying, you know what this is today, at least my core values and what I hope you believe in as my first employee, that we were trying to build this thing, right. And we're trying to put in systems and processes and I just think it starts with that.
So I agree.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: It's a good segue into our next topic of long term vision.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Term vision. I think this is hugely. I'll just, I'll kick it off as something we did, me and my partner when we first started this firm was set like a 10 year goal, you know, 2030 goal. Big crazy goal. But it didn't really mean much to my team. It only was kind of like a me and him thing. Cause it was monetary. Just because that's as business owners the only thing we could think we could measure at the time. But we're like, we're going to do a hundred million in revenue by 2030. Like, wow, that's crazy. And we had a podcast that was called Journey 200 million. And we, we did all stuff. Long story short, we kind of set this big vision, but it wasn't really much meat there to it or how are we going to do it or for any of my employees to understand it at all. And so it was almost like too glorious of a vision. And so then we kind of learned through talking to people, we, we need to make this something they can see themselves in and something that, you know, they can aspire to be and know that they have opportunity here, they have their own goals. And so we've worked really hard over the years to kind of like, we do have big vision here, we do have goals and plans that our folks can fit in to and we make sure we understand their goals and plans so we can help them achieve their things. But we know if we kept growing and improving that they see that they have a long term future with our, with our agency. And that was important to us.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm curious, as you revised your long term vision, did you switch from like quantitative goal to more of a qualitative one or is it still like a numerically focused?
[00:20:21] Speaker B: I, you know, me and my partner kind of still hold on to that quantitative. But no, I mean, really now we switched to more quality. So it's, you know, we're trying to accomplish a certain level of quality here of product performance for our clients. And we also had a time we had to kind of tie it to our clients clients. So we work with a lot of, you know, we, we only work with law firms. So we kind of had to also pull it to be like, okay, who are we really impacting here other than our team and their families? Is the clients. Clients which in some form of legal situation or accident or injury, like, who are we really helping by helping a law firm grow? So we kind of had to go full circle with why would my team care if we help a rich lawyer become richer? You know, and so that's, that's the wrong way to think about it. And of course, now that I know so many lawyers and how awesome they are and good people they are and how much they help people, so we kind of had to step back a ways and kind of reformat the whole thing.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, same, same with us. We really wrestled with sort of the, that battle between like, you know, quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative is nice. And it's just like, oh, it's measurable. It's the thing to go after.
I had always, personally, I'd always found in the past that when the, when the goal was more number focused that sometimes put you in awkward situations of maybe compromising on some of your core values or making a stretch or something that like, okay, it's getting me towards that goal, but it's like, you know, it's sort of eroding things in other areas and you know, everybody's been there. So you, you know, whatever it is you, you know, take on the client that you're like, have a weird feeling about or you're like, ah, you know, and then, you know, bites you in the butt, you know, so these are all, you know, things that all business owners struggle with. We, so we, we ended up going with qualitative goal and, and, and really ours, yeah, similarly, like we're thinking about our clients are so often in the spot of like taking a risk. You know, being a small, you know, being small firm, being small business. Often they, they are like leaving the structure and the support of a larger law firm and just, you know, and it's because, you know, whatever is driving in them, they're like, I can't, I can't do it at this place anymore. I got to do it my way. I got, you know, and, but that's a, you know, huge thing to go from having your lease, your infrastructure, all the technology support, you know, admin staff, everything leads all like, yeah, all that stuff, you know, it's all taken care of and now you're just like doing it on my own.
So yeah, ours, our, our, our goal speaks more to the, to the aspirations of that lawyer. You know, just, you know, and, and we, we frankly want to be the agency that they aspire to use. You know, that's, you know, so that's sort of what we. Harder to measure. But that's, but when you, when you have these goals and that, you know, it does give you sort of that yardstick to measure all of your little decisions, all the day to day stuff by. It's like, is this helping me? I'm on the fence about this thing. Is this helping me point, steer the ship towards this goal and where we want to be and having that as an owner, but also for all the employees who are making, you know, people on the team that are making day to day decisions.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: 100. Yeah, 100% I think, you know, keeping your head on, you know, in that, and saying, hey, we're helping, are we helping these, our clients grow so they can hire more people and serve more, more of their clients? You know, that's kind of in a nutshell, kind of what ours Is, and, and then our core values too. So you know, we, they're kind of wrapped together. It's like, hey, I'm about to do this thing for this, you know. You know, is, is it quality? You know, so our core values are quality. Urgency. Used to be on time. Be like, just be on time. Like now it's urgency. Like no act with urgency on everything. So that means if we can do it faster for the client, do it, you know, don't have to be done three days from now when the task says so. You know, things like that. So but you know, are we meeting all those core goal, core values and leading up, you know, to our mission and to our long term vision. And if we're doing those things, then we know we're doing the right things. We have the right people.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
Other sort of surprise benefits of having this besides just like the day to day operations comes back to what we were talking about before, like with hiring. I've been again until this was like in place. It's a super common question for people that you're interviewing to be on your team. Like what you, you can't grow without a team. You need people, you need to have good people in. And the good people ask questions like where's your business? You know, what do you, what's the, you know, they want to see how they, where what their career path is and how it fits. And so like you said, you know, the, the vision has to, it has to be there. But like I said, it's gotta resonate with everybody so that they can see it fitting with their own objectives and, and what they want. And so it's, that's been a, it's both now that we're sort of tuned into it, you know, when we're interviewing, I, I sort of feel like I'm kind of feel surprised at the number of times it gets asked. And then I'm also. Danny got an answer for this. You know, like it's, it's not, it's nice to have that answer right there. And it builds a lot of confidence in, in potential new hires.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And it, it puts you in a different level. Right. So you got. I talked to a lawyer the day he's actually near us, just scrambling. Had an assistant that left after like a couple dozen years and did everything. And now it's like they don't have anyone. Now it's just him and no one to do anything because he didn't build up a team, didn't build up processes, didn't have that person Record everything they were doing. And so it's. You can operate like that for. Till you're retired or dead. But I'm telling you, all this stuff feeds off each other and it builds. So now that you can answer that question and you have core values and, you know, the quality of the people you're interviewing goes way up because you've weeded out all the other ones, and now you have the best of the best to choose from. And this is from a law firm as well.
And then all of your existing team that believes in the mission, that lives up to the core values that go. That. That shines through to anyone that might be coming new to the team or they're interviewing. Like, my team interviews people. I don't interview people anymore. They now want to be here even more. After they interview with my team, they're like, dang, these people are fricking awesome. They did. They're different. And so most of my new team comes from my team. Like, hey, who do you know that's like you?
I got a friend that's just like me. Go find them. So it just. It helps the whole situation out. And on the flip side of that, it's your marketing. So if you're a law firm and you have a great culture from what we're talking about, building that culture from core values and processes and a vision, it shines through to your potential client that calls in to the law firm or to our agency, when they just hear someone talk or they interact with the team, the experience they have because they're. They're in.
It's. It's just selling your services and your brand even more as well. It's just like this compounding effect in my mind, and I think it's imperative to get these things in place and start as soon as possible.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. And especially it just. And we're now, you know, up to 23 people at the company.
And. And, yeah, just having those things in place just.
It does a lot of, you know, it's a lot of work to keep everybody on the same page. And so just having those. Having those things, then you can be regularly communicating that everybody knows about. It's, you know, it really.
Yeah, really, really helpful for the efficiency for scaling and decision making. Yeah.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Cause you always go back to it, you know, hey, guys, like, what do we say we do here? You know, and you can cite a core value or, you know, the mission or vision or whatever. Like, just a reminder, like, hey, this is what. This is what we're all Trying to do. And if you're not, then maybe they shouldn't be here anymore. Maybe they're, maybe their, their thing has changed and that's going to happen. No one's ever going to stay on board forever. But yeah, I just think, you know, again to a law firm listening, like, imagine if all your team was on the same page, was on the same mission. They loved showing up. They answer the phone to a potential client versus they're just there for a paycheck and you're, you're running around like crazy trying to run, you know, the show. The different situation that they're gonna. Different experience that they're gonna have.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you're right. No, it shows up in a, a different energy that people bring to the table.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: And when you're taking a call for like a injury client or someone in a situation, it's not a good day for them. So you know, that person has to have empathy and be on point and, and care or they're not. Or same with like my firm, like someone watching is having a shitty day and a law firm has a meeting with them. That's a client of mine. Like, why should my team care if they didn't care? Then I'll probably lose a lot of clients. So it just weaves through everything.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Now we can flip to tracking and scorecards, I guess, you know, so, you know, you got these things in place and you got the team rolling in the same direction and.
But you still need to have things to track and data and KPI. So I'm interested to see, I know you asked a little bit, but tell us what you're doing like for, you know, what you call your scorecard and tracking.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So we follow the EOs, guided, you know, guidance pretty much to the letter. So we, we have some values that we track at the highest level of the company. And these are. The picture that gets painted is just sort of like are on an island, you are deserted. And your only thing that's communicated to you each week is this little slip of paper which has these numbers on it. What do you need to be on that slip of paper to know that things are okay? And yeah, boys, I think we got like eight, you know, things that just sort of give like the, you know, that just sort of. So that things are going okay. And these are values that are sort of like real time and sort of predictive, not, not things on the tail end like tracking something like receivables. Sure. I mean that's important to the finance side of the company, but, like, that's way down the road we're in, you know, so we're sort of interested in these things that are kind of like, could be a canary in the coma. Are leads dropping off? Um, you know, what. How are. How's it going with deal closed, deals being closed? How's. How are the pace of projects going? Are. Are we starting projects and finishing projects on time?
You know, that. That sort of stuff, that's all that give like a. A good overarching health of the company.
And then within that, then it goes down to the teams and different divisions. And so they have things that they track that are more granular, that are specific to their work. But, yeah, everybody reports on a thing. And this is an area. I'm not sure how it was in your company, but this is one of the things where I think it's pretty common to meet some resistance because people on the team don't understand that being responsible for, like, reporting the number or putting it on the scorecard does not mean that you're responsible for what the number is.
You might be the person that's just the most logical to report on that number, but if it's low, it doesn't necessarily mean it's your fault. It just, you know, you're the one reporting on it. You might have some influence on it, but you're the person that we're going to first talk to. You know, it's like, all right, what's going on with this one? You know, but that was sort of the analogy I tried to give was like. Like, if you're like flying a 747, you got the pilots up there running, you know, doing the thing. There's a thousand sensors on that plane. That plane has a huge scorecard that shows up in the cockpit. And so you just. So you got people from all. You got people and you got sensors all around the plane that are reporting on data to let you know this thing is staying in the air and going in the direction it needs to go.
And if there's a problem, you want that little light to beep and know it as soon as possible so that you can get ahead of it versus, like, looking for the black box on the ground. What the hell happened?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: No, I think that's awesome.
And, yeah, I think it's harder. It's harder to implement once you've already been established and been around. So, like, you.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: You.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: You're into it a year. That's a lot harder than, like, hey, welcome to the team. We already have this in place.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: So taking your existing team and saying, hey, now we're tracking you like, you know, we're a big brother and we want to know everything you're doing. I think that's the other part of resistance that you'll f. You'll face and explain it in the right way, just like, like Brendan did. I like that analogy. It's like, listen, we're trying to accomplish our goals, guys. We want to make sure that we're healthy and stable and growing. And so, yeah, we need to have optics on the areas that, you know, are most vulnerable and things that if we. If we knew ahead of time, we can make adjustments. So if you just communicate the right way versus, hey, we're coming after you, and we need to track everything you're doing, that's not going to go too well.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It just, it recognizes the interconnectedness of all the pieces of the business. So, for instance, you know, one of the things we might track is that we track is like, development time. There's sort of like a typical range that it should take to develop a website. But if that, if it goes out of that range.
Yeah, then okay, hey, we're gonna. And if it goes out for a week, okay, no problem. But if you start to notice a pattern like, oh, it's. It's still. It's drifting higher, well, then that's, you know, that's the reason to have a conversation and, and say, well, what's going on here? And at that point, it could be you just know the numbers off what you were expecting and that. But now you're having a conversation with. At least they're probably starting off with, like, the right person and it's going to surface something. It might surface. Hey, I've had, like, a lot of stress in my family life, and I just haven't been bringing my egg game. That could be it. Okay, all right. We gotta, you know, work with that. That could be something. Or it could be, hey, yeah, the design team has, like, started to be. Started sending things in a different way, or there's like, more mistakes happening further upstream. And so I'm having to, like, compensate for those. And then, then, then you're like, okay, well, now I gotta go talk to the design team and figure out what's happening there. And the design team might say, oh, yeah, we tried new software. It. It wasn't working. Or they might say, well, the person who set up the project is giving instructions in different ways, but you can't solve any of this stuff if you don't know there's a problem. It's. Yeah. There. And law firms are no different. You know, it's like there, there are definitely numbers you can track that will give you insights as to how things are going.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. How fast are, you know, your cases, you know, going to, you know, taking the clothes? You can track a lot of different data. I know Greg, Craig Golden Farb, been on the. He's been on the show here.
He's an attorney out of Florida. Craig is. I'm pretty sure he's on the US but he's like super dialed in. He's got like a. He's got like TV dashboards. He's got like 107 of these scorecard like, things. He tracks like, he gets. He goes over the top, but he tracks everything. But. And he runs a law firm. So. Yeah, just you find so many ways to improve things through what Brendan's doing. And what we're doing is. And in our case, using design or websites, you could change a question on a questionnaire for a new client. That would give the design team some information.
They can start sooner or get things kicked off. Whatever, whatever. You're going to find optimizations. You should be also constantly trying to optimize your process, make it more efficient, save more time, save more money. And I know with me and Brendan, in our world, we're constantly having to do that because we're going up against competition and more efficiencies out there. AI. So it's. You gotta kind of look for those areas that you can improve.
If you see it taking longer or off track, then obviously that's a problem that you can identify just by talking to your team.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Here I was looking here we have, across the whole company, there's a couple duplicates, about 120 measurables across the whole company.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: At the leadership level, I check. Just check. It's 15 things that we check on in the leadership team.
Yeah. So that's a lot of. I mean, it's a lot of great data.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: The other thing that's super helpful for law firms is that. And the idea behind the scorecard is that then you're getting this data on a regular interval, typically weekly, and you have it over time. And so then when some numbers. Because that can be. The other thing is that sometimes the number might be off. And it might be off because it's just what happens this time of year. You know, divorces go down close to the holidays, bankruptcy filings go up around tax, you know, but you Know, there's just different. There's, you know, depending on the practice of law. There's definitely a seasonality to some, you know, businesses. And so it can give you some comfort too, when you're like, oh, things seem slow this month. And you know what? Yeah, they. They were slow the same time last year too. It must, you know, might just be how it is. And you can either just.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah, then you can get trends.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: You can get trends for the data, saying pretty much. Right. And I ask lawyers all the time, you got any seasonality? Like, you know, either. They know. They. They don't have a clue. But yeah, every business is seasonal to some degree. And so you have those trends. And then you got benchmarks too, right? Benchmarks for people that come on board. Hey, the team we have has been able to stay at these levels of, of numbers, and now you have a good expectation of what a new hire you should expect. And so, you know, you can start to see like, high performers versus what you expect versus underperformers. So without data, you ain't having any of that stuff. And lawyer law firms can do this across the board too.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: But yeah, no, these three things, I think. Yeah. When we were sort of chatting about the, you know, what to talk about today. I mean, of course, as we both know, EO EOs, there are many, many more pieces to the system. And sort of the beauty of these systems is how it weaves them together. You know, it's like instead of taking all these things sort of piecemeal, you know, implementing it in a way that whether you're a new business or an existing one, that it can integrate into way you do things in a organized and not haphazard way so that it actually, like, sticks. So we're kind of giving a little, little preview of things here. I think these are things that are, you know, definitely universally apply. Any business could benefit from it is a. It's a piece of a bigger thing too.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So they all, they all tie together and yeah, you can learn these things and kind of pick and choose and apply here and there, but in the day, do something like eos and, and just, just get there a lot faster. Trust me, it's gonna help out a lot.
So you think you want to do it on your own or figure it out yourself? Yeah, it's just gonna take you that much more time to, to get spun up and running, especially if you don't have a lot of time, then you're running a small business. So yeah, good points. Well, Brendan, I love it. Thanks for sharing all these things that you're doing and which, you know, confidence in people working with you and our firm is, you know, that we're, we're investing in these things and we're thinking about these things and we're intentional about what we're doing.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like you said at the opening of the show here, like it is, you'll talk to anybody. We'll talk to anybody. I, I just think there's nothing to be gained or not. Nothing but upside for, for just sharing and helping everybody make an educated decision and, and find the partner that is the right fit for them. Because it's, yeah, they're, they're putting, these firms are putting a lot on the line to, to be in business and get out there and so you want to be with somebody that you, you feel is good.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: 100. Yeah, it. Find the right partner. There's lots of reasons why I'm not a fit or you're not a fit hire in house, you know, whatever you want to do. So open to, to point anyone in the right direction and Brendan is too. And I can appreciate that. So anyway, get out there everyone. Brendan, thanks so much for sharing what you're doing to, to manage your firm and to grow. But take core value seriously from the beginning. That'll set the stage for these other things that if you haven't set a long term vision, if you haven't, you know, got a system like us or set processes in place, you know, start with those core values. Look at EOS retraction, give you a great starting point to kind of understand all this and, and don't go it alone. You need to hire good people and get yourself out of the minutiae of the day to day work. So.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Kevin, hey, thanks again for having me on.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Yep. Dude, I appreciate it everyone. Thank you so much. Check out Brendan, but the modern firm. Brendan, chart on LinkedIn. Is it the, the modern firm dot com. Is that your website?
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Themodernfirm.com that'll do it.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: We'll check him out. If your small firm needs some help, connect with them. If not, connect with me and I'll make an intro. So see you next time, everyone.
Thanks for tuning in. See you soon.
