[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you go to it in the first day, you don't feel like you got ten times worth what you paid, we'll give you a full refund and up to a thousand dollars worth of reimbursable hotel rooms, airfare, whatever it is.
Hey.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey, what's up, everyone? When we are live or recording. And I got an awesome special guest today, first of all, my guests are awesome and special, I like to say, but I got Ken Hardison here today. Uh, if you don't know who Ken is, you know, I don't know why you listen to my show, but Ken runs his own firm, of course. Also founded pilma. You got the, the Super Summit coming up. And I, I saw Ken at NTL National Trial Lawyers Summit down in Miami and said, hey, let's get you on the show. Let's talk about pilma. Let's see what's coming up. And a lot of my law firm owners listening.
Can you find a lot of help in his organization and, and the event coming up. And so we're just here to, to chat and hear from Ken. And. And he left NTL and went down to Key West. He's been in Florida for what, about two or three weeks now, I guess.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: And I. He didn't invite me. He didn't invite me. So now I'm. I'm in Virginia in a bunch of snow.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Well, you could have stayed Miami too, you know.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: That's true. I could. My wife would probably been upset at some point, but good seeing you and your wife and your dog.
You got one dog?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Got two. Got two. Two pugs.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah, two pugs. Cool. I. I saw one of them at least, but yeah, great time seeing you. And yeah, Ken, say hi and we'll, we'll get into some conversation about some upcoming events and.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And Yeah, I founded First Pillman Personal Injury Lawyers Marketing Management association about 15 years ago after I sold my first law firm that I built. Then I built another one that sold it.
But yeah, it's been fun.
I'd like to think we've helped a lot of lawyers grow over the last 10, 15 years. We put on a big summit every year. We've had four or five hundred lawyers there, probably between. Well, I think we have about 70 vendors there this year. You know, we try to stay on the cutting edge. Like, the big deal this year, of course, is, you know, AI has been going around for about two years, but as I said, two Years ago. The dust has got to settle. You're kind of seeing who the ones that kind of rise above the dust because everybody and his brother was trying to get in it. And you know, so we got a lot of people talking about how to use AI the correct way because I don't know, you know, I just saw where lawyer law firm, a big one, the biggest one, the biggest one in the nation got tagged up in western part of the country for using AI and having false citations to cases. You just can't do that. I mean, you know, it's chat. GBT is a tool, it's not a replacement. And but you know, we're going to have some people talking a lot about that, the do's and don'ts and how they're using it in their firm. And we got a bunch of my mastermind members, they probably got a half a dozen those who are going to talk about how they like Matt Dubin, how he went from $300,000 a year to $16 million a year, how one guy doubled his income, went from 10 million to 20 million and roses net from 15% to 30%. You know, just different things like that. Have some people talking about offshore social media. I'm going to talk about how to implement because what I see a lot of artists go to, they get, they go to these events and they get all these notes and they get all this stuff and they make them a list of 20 things they're going to do and they go back with the full intention of doing it. But life gets in the way, they get busy and nothing gets done. I've always said I don't have one great idea. Yeah implement the 20, you know, or one good idea that I implement versus the 20 great ideas that I never implemented. Because that's what it all comes down to. You got, you got to implement the guys that are successful, the ladies that are successful in any business is the ones that I call it get done. You've got to or either got to be a leader to get other people to get it done and hold them accountable. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. 10th year, I think.
Yeah. So you know, there's a lot of events to go to now though. I will say that a lot and some really good and some not so good. But I would hope that ours is dollars in at least the top two or three of ones to go.
You know, try to give practical, not just a bunch of theory and not. We don't have a lot of. I don't, I don't I specifically, I do it for two reasons. I don't hire a lot of these big name stars or celebrities. Number one, that cost too much for, for an hour, just to be honest with you. Then number two is we really all about nuts and bolts and not about the, you know, the lights and the, the glam. Yeah, yeah, all the smoke and stuff I really like just. Well, I'm old Kevin, and I think I'm old fashioned. So I just want to give great content, you know and give people a list of those things to do take back home and you know, grow their practice. I mean, you know, I listen when I was growing my first practice, there was nothing, there was nothing. There was no masterminds, there was no events. I mean, and your competition won't tell you anything and lawyers need it now more than ever because let's just face it, competition's getting crazy. I mean you got John Morgan, who I've known since 96, just built an empire. You got other big firms that are out there doing it. You got Sweet James are coming. They're going to be nationwide. They're already doing it and power to them, man. Listen, it takes a lot to do that. I have no civil Lawrence I know are upset about it but listen, you can do the same thing. The deal is there's always room. Even when Walmart came to towns, the smart business people survived.
The ones that weren't so smart and didn't know how to differentiate themselves, they didn't survive. And that's the way I, I call it the Walmart effect. I think it's the same thing happening, happening now. Plus the hedge money coming in the Arizona, you'll see a lot more, you know, so I see a lot of things like that and I see, and this is something I'm toy with. I had. This is not a done deal but I'm thinking that we did it two or three years ago as just an add on. But I think this fall might put on an event just for buying and selling law firms because that's the quickest way to grow any business is to do a lot of acquisitions. Before we go on this podcast. I was just looking at something that burn varnish or somebody he shared it but I think it was up in Inc or Fortune magazine about these roll up, you know, and using, you know, private equity and stuff like that, how to, how to buy. But that's the quickest way. Somebody asked me one day what's the quickest way I could grow a lot of money and borrow a lot of By a lot of firms. I said, you know, that are good. I said, but, but you're going to have a lot of debt. That's not the way I would do it, but that is a way to do it. Look at all the big, big, major, major corporations like Microsoft and Google. That's what they do. They go out and buy other companies, you know, all the time. I mean, that's just the way they grow so fast.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: We have a goal this year to acquire actually.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Excuse me.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: So we have a goal this year to acquire an agency.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I've seen, you know, I've seen a lot. Be honest with you, Kevin. I've seen a couple, two or three SCM companies get bought up this last year.
And there's one that I can't say, but big money. I'm talking about big, big money. I'm talking about loads of money.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, there's money out there.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: You know, so, you know, but that's if you got the infrastructure, if you know what you're doing, I mean, you can, you can, you can run it more efficient than the person that you bought it from, you know, and not duplicate services. I mean, you know, the overhead part of it, the management part, you know.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Well, I like, you know, a lot of what you said there for everyone listening, you know what I think, what I like what Ken said. So with PILMA and I've been to a lot of these other events too, big name celebrities and people like that, they don't have the advice to give you on how to build a law firm or even probably a company at all. Um, it's, it's exciting. Smoke and mirrors, like you said. So if you want practical, you want to hear from real lawyers that have implemented these things or using AI and how they've done it.
PILMA is true to that. And, and Ken's kept it true to that. And I know Cassidy who runs like your CMO Roundtable. I spoke to that group recently. Yeah, just practical things that you can do, come back and implement to your point. You know, if you're in Palma, you know, you're going to have that accountability as well. Like what are you implementing, what did you learn? And then what are we taking back and actually applying because you can just go have fun of these things and come back and not do anything.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's one reason I quit doing them in Vegas about six, seven years ago. I used to do two a year and I used to do them in Vegas second day. Half the people There, I mean, they hung over or whatever. I don't know what they were doing. I don't, I don't know. I didn't, I didn't go investigate, but. But I just know it never happened. Even in New Orleans, we don't lose that many people and we're doing it in Denver this year. So, you know, I don't think there's any gambling in Denver. I'm not sure. I know there's going to be a lot of hot. But that's, but that's. Anytime you go to Denver. But it's like, not that I'd do it. I would have, but I didn't want to lose my bar license and that's what I was scared of. I was a. What do you call it? Because I worked so hard to get my license. I didn't, I would never do anything to jeopardize them, you know, some of my lawyer friends to do it. I said, well, can I understand? I said, man, I had to work my way through law school. I said, you know, I just, I can't risk it. I said, you know, probably wouldn't, but I just didn't want to. I didn't even want to take a chance. And I, and I don't think that's wrong with it, but. And now it's legal a lot, I guess. But back when I was doing it back in the 80s and 90s, it was not legal. I can tell you. Nowhere, anywhere.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think you know, what you're doing.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: I love.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: And you know, you're focused on again, practical, tactical things that, you know, lawyers can, can apply and some of the other events, you know, that's just, you know, it's more about the sponsorships and the speakers that are, you know, having some celebrities and.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, thought ntl and then they have celebrities. But I thought they had a, I thought this year they did a really good job on the business side of law. They had a lot of good people. You know, we did one half a day, but they had, they had, they were doing it like when I first started with them, they only did like a half a day. That's like two full days or three full days. They've got a track running on that and it stays pretty full. I mean, at least it was when I was in there. I won't there the whole time, but. So they're doing good job. Yeah, yeah, they're doing a good job on it and you know, and then they got the business along, but, you know, there's just so many Events. You can't go to all of them. You still got to stay home, practice law, make a living, you know, I felt good the other day. They was on LinkedIn or something. He said, you know, I want to go to a thing, but I can't go to all of them. What's the best one to go to? Somebody said, us. And I was like, thank God. You know, because you never know. There are a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of events, and there's some others. Really. We're not the only good one in town. I like to think we're the best, but, I mean, there's some just as good. I mean, I know they are, but there's a lot for everyone given there's like three or four minutes just to be out.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot out there, I think, you know. You know, even me looking at, you know, where I'm a marketer, so, like, where can I go? Where should I hang out and. And what's the best place for me to spend my time? And, you know, sometimes come down to schedule and some come down to, you know, ones I know that are good or I've been to before and just. And know they're good. So, yeah, there's a lot of options out there. I will say that. You know, the. Back to your point earlier on, no lawyer that's trying to start a firm or grow a firm should have anything to complain about as far as access to information.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's out there. I mean, there's so many coaches out there. I don't. I used to coach. I don't anymore because, I mean, you know, I'm slowing down. But, I mean, I know at least five great coaches right now for law firm owners, if they want them. I mean, you know, I mean, they're just great. I mean, and they've got the proof. I mean, they built.
Built big firms. I mean, it's not just John. I mean, they know what they're doing. I mean, it might not be lawyers. They might be CEOs of law firms that grew, like, from 2 million to 50 million, but they helped do it.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to have a good CEO or a good somebody in there. Number two person. You can't do it. You can't do it by yourself, I'll tell you that. No way.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: I think you need to make that choice, you know, mindset choice of do I want to be just a good lawyer or do I want to be a. An owner and. And make that decision. On, you know, do you want to still practice law a little bit and, and work on the business, or are you just going to be a good lawyer and then you need to hire people to. To take it to the next level?
[00:13:04] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, I like to get.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: A lot stuck in the middle of that decision. You're going to cost yourself a lot of time and heartache.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Tell people I got this thing I do from a mastermind sometime, but it's a whole process. And I learned it from Dan Sullivan, who is a great business coach.
He's written a bunch of great books.
But time.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: He wrote that book, right?
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, he wrote that. But the one I like is I stayed with him for three years from like 2009, 2012. And one thing, the most important thing I learned from him was, you know, leverage. Everybody's got strengths, everybody's got weaknesses and Leverage your strengths and delegate. Surround yourself with other people whose weakness, their strengths or your weaknesses to complement your strength and do what you want to do, because your strength is going to be something you love to do. It's going to be something you're damn really good at, and you're going to get joy. You're going to get up every morning and look forward to doing it. If you get up every morning, you're not looking forward to what you're doing, then you need to change positions or change what you do. If you just like to try cases and go hire. I've seen some law firms with two partners, and one of them, he's a trial lawyer, the other one does the business. And they. They get along fine. I mean, and they're both doing what they want to do and what they love, their strengths. And I think that's the most important thing.
You know, I always tell all my children, I said, find something you got a passion for that you love, and I'll help you figure out how to make money at it. But. But the deal is if you don't. I don't care how much money you make. If you're. If you're not. If you don't have a passion when you get up in the morning, you're going to be miserable. I don't care how much money you make. You know, and we can always figure out how to make money. I mean, you know, there's so many ways in the United States to make money. It's unbelievable.
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[00:16:06] Speaker B: That's good advice there. And I tell my kids the same thing and yeah, I know quite a bit. I have a lot of, of clients that had that, that dual partnership kind of. One's the lawyer, one's the business person. It worked, it works well in every situation that I've pretty much come across. So, you know, the few times I've.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Seen it not work is for one guy felt like he was, you know, he was doing more or you know, contributed more the other one and, and therefore he, he should get more money. It's usually, it's usually, it's usually about money or egos, you know, you know.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: But it's not having egos. Come on.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true, that's true.
But yeah, I mean, you know, but most time we work seen it really work very well with a lot of firms.
But, but being having a law part is like getting married too, you know, so you got to work on it.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I have a business partner and we, it's my work wife basically. So I got my wife and my work wife and you know, they both want the world. So.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what my, my wife says. She says you got me and then you got your work wife who's my CEO.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: And they're both yelling at you.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Well, I mean I, yeah, I've just heard so nothing but good things about Pillman, what you've done and obviously you've been successful selling multiple firms. So proofs in the pudding. And I think anyone listening, you know, if you don't know what Pillman is about, you know, leave a comment, reach out to me, I'll connect you with, with Ken or his folks. Super summit's coming up. I think it's April 29th to May 2nd in Denver.
Give me a good time. So.
Yeah. Ken, anything else you want to add?
[00:17:49] Speaker A: No.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: No folks out there listening?
[00:17:52] Speaker A: No, we got a. We're going to launch a new book. And so we did this little deal where I got all bunch of lawyers and experts that are really good at hiring and onboarding and because that seems to be another big issue right now, finding people and people. Yeah, we put together like a two day event and what we did, we used AI and to transcribe, transcribed it all out, put it into a book. They got our authors, you know, our speakers to review them and edit to them. And we're putting it together and as a book and we're going to launch it then.
And all the proceeds are going to go to my charity foundation I created about five years ago, Lawyers Against Drug Addiction. I lost a son to drugs about five, six years now. So I started that and we, some, we always do something to try to raise money and we give it to nonprofits that are helping people get off of drugs, you know, which is very hard.
It has no boundaries. Drug addiction affects poor people on the street, millionaires. It's not discriminatory. It goes after anybody, any phase of life, any age, any. It don't matter.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: That's awesome that you're doing that.
And that sounds very helpful to law firm members out there. Yeah, that's a big issue. Finding, hiring, onboarding.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: I think that and AI is like the two big hot topics. And I think third coming in is you got a lot of boomers like me that are getting ready, trying to figure out how to exit and they don't know where to go, how to do it. And then you got a bunch of mega farms that are trying to go in and buy other firms. So you got kind of like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, timing seems to be right. So I think it's got to be good for law firm owners that are making about retired but. But to get the best money. And I've seen this happen to a couple of our mastermind members. They were getting like in their 60s. And you know, I said, well, if you're going to sell it, you got to get it sellable, which means you got to have all your processes, all your procedures and have it and placed where, you know, kind of runs. And then like the last one, we did it with the lawyer. I talked to him, I said, well, you ready to sell it? He said, no, man. He said, I got it all Set up. He said, hell, I could be gone for two months and I don't have to worry about. He said, hell, if I'd known this, he said, hell, no, I'm not gonna sell it. And I said, so, you know, I thought that was interesting.
It took him more to sell it, to get it to where it should have been to start with 10 years ago. Right. We don't know what we don't know. Right. We don't know what we don't know.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: That's funny. I, you know, I think my motto here with my firm is, you know, build it as if you want to sell it. Doesn't matter if you want to sell it.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: But if you're. If you're doing it as if you could sell at the top dollar and you can run it that way, well, then you can sell it anytime you want. But you're going to be a lot happier and things will run a lot smoother and clients will be a lot happier. So it might be. Might be good just to keep on holding onto it. So.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Well, if, yeah, if you're wanting to sell, it's going to take three to five years to get to where you want to go if you haven't put those things in place. So, yeah, good way to think. Don't want to sell it when you like it. Well, Ken.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: I appreciate you coming on, but I would, you know, let us know about the book when that's going to be out.
Hopefully, folks listening, all my law firm owners and lawyers can contribute, purchase, you know, that book, so the proceeds go to your charities there. When is that going to be released?
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Probably released it probably the weekend of the summit. Right there at the summit, because I'm going to try to get everybody to buy a bunch for their different lawyers and different people in the firm. Yeah. Nice.
Get me a good Amazon rate so I can get it on bestseller.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Ken's gonna be on stage going, all right, everyone get out your car.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
And review it. Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Well, I'll.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: I'll definitely buy a copy and review it myself. Um, I'm looking forward to it, so. All right, everyone. Well, if you're interested in Pilma again, the Super Summit's coming up and we'll have this episode out. If you're listening right now, before it. And it's April 29th to the. To May 2nd. I think it'
[email protected], i think P I L M M A.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Just go to event. You can register right there. We. We've been doing the Same guarantee since I started filming. Number one. If you go ahead and register and you get a trial or something, 30 days, you can get your full refund. If you go to it in the first day, you don't feel like you got ten times worth what you paid, we'll give you a full refund and up to a thousand dollars worth of reimbursable hotel rooms, airfare, whatever it is. So the deal is, I've never had anybody asked for it, but I always bring my checkbook just in case, you know, I do that with everything at film. I got a 90 day guarantee on the gold membership. The masterminds, they go to the first mastermind. If they don't feel like it's a good fit, I get full refund. Nobody ever asked 15 years for refund. I have had some gold people ask for refunds. Usually we get about 2%. We said not bad and you know, but we did well. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the way to do it. I mean, and there's no long term contracts. Everything I do is I tell people I don't want your money if I'm not helping you.
And I want to, I want to have a great reputation. I don't have a good reputation, a lot of money.
You know, I think I'll have a lot of money if I got a good reputation anyway. So, you know, it usually works that way.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: But yeah, same way I am. I mean, I'm not, not interested to sign up a client that we can't help or, or keep them locked into something. It just doesn't, doesn't make. It's not worth it. It's not worth it for them or me or reputation. Repetition can go bad real quick.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: It takes years to build it, seconds to lose it.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. Well, Ken, I appreciate you coming on to share great stuff that you've been doing. I. To, you know, tell everyone that's listening, you know, check out the summit. Check out Pilma. Be a great introduction to, to the, to Ken's group and what they do.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: And yeah, you keep doing, you, you keep doing the great work you're doing, my friend.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for coming back on. Ken's been on before and he's welcome anytime.
Ken, I appreciate you coming on. Stick on with me for a second while this uploads and everyone else, have a great day. Be serious about your firms and sky's the limit. We'll see you soon.
