Why Lawyers Struggle With Business Development

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, everyone, what's up? Welcome to another recording of the managing partners podcast. I got a. A friend of mine have had him on the podcast at least once, and my business partner might have had you on as well. So this might be your third time. [00:00:13] Speaker B: You say three times a charm. [00:00:14] Speaker A: Three times a charm. Maybe you'll have some good content this time. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I screwed up the last two. I got a lot of making up to do. [00:00:21] Speaker A: Just. Just kidding. Well, Steve, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for coming back. Excited about today's. Today's. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Always a pleasure. And I just love everything you're doing and kind of watching you closely and from a distance to see what's next. Always got something popping up. So was happy to see an invitation to come back and. And hopefully share some wisdom to help your audience. You figure out the whole business development side of things. That crap you never learned in law school type of stuff. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. Watch you. See you on. On all the socials. And it's. I think it's interesting how, you know, you meet people, you've met em, you've talked to em, and then you just kind of see em. See em around. It might be another year before you talk to em again. So. But we try to stay in touch and keep up. So. Yeah, excited to talk about that. You know, for all the law firms out there listening here, the thing, Steve, is I talked to some that are. They even started their firm. Some just started their firm and then some have been doing it for a decade or two decades. I see some of the same problems across every single one of those categories. And. And so, you know, bringing a new business is definitely one of those issues. Just talked to a firm today that are down more than they ever have been. Car accident attorney out of Wisconsin. And they're not sure what the problem is, you know, or what they should be working on or what they gotta fix. [00:01:38] Speaker B: So it might be a good strategic introduction, Kevin. Cause one of the. One of the things that I do jumping right in is. Is evaluate. Right, Evaluate. And the saying is it's hard to see the label from inside the bottle. And so having you, myself, Eric, you know, people that are in marketing, business development, operations, whatever it is the issue to have them, you know, ask a bunch of questions, identify what's happening, look at things, you know, from a different perspective, you know, makes. It can sometimes make you. Even if nobody works with us, the fact that we're able to identify gaps and issues and where there might be kind of dinks in the Armor, I think, is really helpful, and people don't take advantage of that as. Maybe as often as they should. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I always tell people, you know, I welcome just a conversation or analysis anytime. Doesn't mean you have to hire us or that you even could hire us. I don't care. You know, I was telling Steve earlier, like, I'm generally interested in business, and you could be sitting beside me on a plane and you have a pet store. How does that work? You know, I want to know. But, you know, talking to some of these, these law firms, too, it's. They kind of want to jump a little bit too fast and say, what do you recommend? What do we got to fix? Can we just switch over to you and. And you just fix it? [00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:47] Speaker A: So. Well, slow down. Let's. Let's back up. I'm not going to show you anything on the screen. I'm not going to present a slide deck. I have a lot of questions for you, though. And do you have time to answer these questions? Some are going to be business questions. They're going to be financial questions. They're going to be a lot of things. What have you done? Where have you been? And more about your firm. Like, you know, the culture, the makeup of the firm. So there's a lot of questions that go into it. And, you know, not always these. Some of these firms want to spend the time, or they just want the, no, I hire you, you, you fix. And those are not. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Kevin, it might be interesting, since you brought it up. I brought it up, and then you backed up my bringing it up, that business development and the idea or concept of a pitch meeting, which all lawyers know that term, where it implies sort of convincing, pitching, selling, talking. That your point about asking questions and really getting down to the root of the problem is, is at the heart of what sales should be and what takes the word sales out of sales. I call it sales free selling. But when you make the entire engagement about the other person, about their needs and trying to identify their gaps and how deep the rabbit hole goes in their problems and pain and potential gain and the art of asking questions. For most lawyers, they get it in a deposition, they get it in a trial, and, you know, but in a, in a business development meeting, it sort of eludes or escapes them. And so maybe taking a few minutes to talk about what are good questions to ask or what's the flow of questions when you're meeting with a new general counsel, a new CEO, a new decision maker to keep control of the meeting. But Also make sure you get the questions answered because that's at the heart of not only what gets them to buy into you as a lawyer, but, but also think about this. You're going to know a lot more. You're going to know a lot more about what to present. If you get to the point where you need to present 100%. [00:04:40] Speaker A: I love that. [00:04:42] Speaker A: And the fact that, yeah, they're good at it in certain situations, but not maybe talking to a new potential client or in that sales situation. And they're thinking of it as sales. Like this is sales. So, yeah, I would love to dive into. [00:04:54] Speaker B: I was like, I was like the greatest communicator of my friends in high school, but I couldn't. And you know, I couldn't ask a question to a girl. Right. I was super shy back then. So I don't know, maybe there, there's something to be said about, about, you know, how lawyers behave with certain types of people, like clients and other folks, and then how it might be with a strategic partner. Again, it's all a learned skill too. So I think there's something to be said about taking a few minutes to just kind of educate. And again, if lawyers are listening and they have, you know, 10 ideas and we give them 10. Well, you got 20 and you pick the best five. [00:05:26] Speaker A: I love it. I mean, it's, yeah, the stigma around sales, you know, it's. And then we can dive into, to some of your suggestions. You know, sale on a service, it should be right. So I'm helping this person that needs this and I got to find out if I'm the one that service them or not. And you know, so we got to dig deep to figure this out. If they end up being a client of mine, that means I'm doing them a service, not that I sold them. [00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's fun to buy. It doesn't feel good to be sold to or to sell. Right. So that's the big switch. And the mind shift has to happen for lawyers to realize that they are in the solutions business. That's what lawyers do. If I had 10 lawyers in a room and I said, raise your hand if you like to solve problems. Every hand's going up. But if I say, how many of you want to sell legal services? All the hands go down. But what is sales? Sales is helping someone solve a problem. The problem is that, that your client's business is down. The law firm's business is down 10, 20% this year. So what do we need to do to identify why it's down. What do we need to identify, to identify their commitment to change the course of that future and direct them in a way that's going to get it back up. Right. And are we the best people to help them with that? Is it a marketing issue? Is it an SEO issue? Is it a business development or sales issue? Right. Maybe it's operational. Maybe they don't have the bandwidth or the team to handle the business and they've been turning a business away for so long. There's all kinds of reasons. But the way that I see questioning Kevin is a little bit like if we just think of like someone that's crawling along and then they get up and they slowly start to walk and then they lean into a jog and then a run and then a sprint. I think there's a pro, a progress of how we ask questions and when we ask questions, that needs to be evolving as we meet with someone. So if you're a prospective client for me as a lawyer, I don't jump into, how much money did you lose last year? Or, you know, why are you, why, why'd you call me? Like, I'm not getting, how do you know? It sounds like you've got problems. How does that make you feel? Like, I mean, these are horrible questions that would never be or should never be asked at the beginning of a meeting. But if I can get some understanding and background about the firm, what they've been doing, what they're trying to accomplish, then the next question I might ask is, all right, so regarding growing the law practice, what are some of the challenges, frustrations, concerns that you've had and that you're continuing to have? And then I zip my lip and I wait. And what I'm looking for is somewhere between three to five answers to that question. Because if it's just one thing, like, oh, we just don't have a plan, well, that may not be a good fit for me. Because if that's all they need is a plan, I'll just help them with a plan. I'm not going to charge them and I'm not going to get them involved in a, in a, you know, a program with me. Okay, but if I identify that the plan is just one of the symptoms, right, It's a plan. Ineffective business development across the board. They're not leveraging their existing clients, past clients. They're not cross marking effectively. And the list, the hits go on and on. And then that's sort of, now I'm walking, maybe starting into a jock. And then we can ask deeper questions like why do you, you know, tell me more about this or why do you think this is happening? How long has this been going on? Leaning into more of a run sprint question. What do you think this is, is costing your firm? Or how is it impacting you on a personal level? The fact that your numbers are down so much and yet you don't have a solution for how to resolve that if nothing changes, is that okay? Like if you go another two years like this, is that okay? Well, no, we're going to have to fire half of our team and we, and then, then they start rattling off all the kind of the impacting things that will occur, may occur if things don't go in a better direction. Well, now we're, now what have we done? We started with they've got a couple problems and where are we ending cost impact, pain, challenge frustration. Right. And when they verbalize that to you as the lawyer. Right. Changes everything a hundred percent. [00:09:28] Speaker A: A hundred percent. It's, you know, I think. And that's the right way to handle this, is asking those questions, get them, get him to speak up. And I, I think again, you got a lot of lawyers that come in hot with, I want a solution, fix this. Of course, for me it's all marketing stuff. So PPC company is not doing a job. You just take over and it's like, whoa, let's figure out what the problem is. You know, it might not be the PPC company. It might not, we might not get this client because there might not be a PPC ad management problem. Right. Could be very well, likely a, a law firm problem on lots of different levels. Right. Intake, sales, things you're talking about. And so instead of just blaming the other provider, you know, you have to take the time to dig that out for the lawyers listening too. Give your partners or like, you know, Steve, the programs he runs or your other vendors the courtesy and the time if they're going to ask these questions, hopefully they do to participate in that. If you really want to solve your problems, you can't just shortcut things or say, hey, let me just hire another XYZ vendor to just take over and solve the problem. If they do, then the problem will probably persist and they just get your business for a short period of time. So. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Well, again, I think that's what identifies the word fit. Right? Am I a fit for this client? Are they a fit for me? Do the problems that they have mirror what I resolve every day? And that could go for you or for a lawyer. [00:10:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:56] Speaker B: Way to set up asking questions so that it's not out of the blue and that it allows us to control the meaning. Because as soon as a lawyer starts getting asked questions, right here's my problem, you know, I need you to fix it. What are you going to do? What's your strategy? What do you charge? And they start getting into that. Now. Prescription is happening, but there hasn't been a proper diagnosis yet. So the idea is that we need to set up with the prospective client, whether you're me, you, or a lawyer, to set up a game plan, to set up an agreement, an upfront agreement. It's been called a lot of things, agendas, upfront agreements. But ultimately there we need to establish the game, the rules of engagement. And so I would. I would say something like, you know, this is how much time we have. The purpose of us meeting today, Kevin, really see if there's a good fit that we can work together. What I'd like to suggest is that we spend some time, if you'd allow to let me ask you some questions. And quite frankly, I ask some tough questions. That's part of what I do as a coach. Are you going to be okay with that? You say yes, I now have permission and direction to spend the majority of our time now asking you questions, which means this engagement's about you, not me. And I'm going to come in and make it about me later, but only after I know everything. I need to know that there's a fit. And this is another important word, the word qualify that you are, or lawyer, for example, is qualified to work with me. We think it's the other way around, but it's actually not okay, because I don't want to chase somebody for six months or three months or anything if they're not a fit. And if I can identify that in the initial meeting or two, that they are not qualified, they don't have the money, they're not the decision maker, they don't have real reasons to change. They're just kicking tires, whatever it might be. It allows me to walk away very quickly and stay friends. That's cool. But ultimately, not invest someone else. Yeah. Not. Not waste all the time that people tend to waste chasing after people for six months a year. In fact, I have clients come to me with a list of like 10 clients they've been chasing after for years, and I say, let's just review each one individually. And it's like, nope, that one's gone. That one. And it's like the amount of weight that's lifted off their shoulders because they felt they could never get rid of that opportunity because it could be so meaningful, it could be a dream that it could happen. But I listen to everything that's happened up to that point. They're never going to use you. They're never going to turn the business to you. Let's move them out and invest your time with people who actually appreciate the brilliance of you as a lawyer or whatever it might be. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point, I think. Yeah. For whatever reason, they made a decision why they don't believe you're a fit and you're still chasing them. They've made that decision. It's pretty hard to change their mind and do what you want to. Really. [00:13:34] Speaker B: I just sent out. I sent out five emails today, basically turning five lawyers away because they didn't reply quickly enough to my advances to say, hey, let's work together. Working with me is. It means taking action. And if somebody's going to kick tires for a month, they're not a good client for me because guess what? We start working together and they're not going to be coachable. They're not going to take action on the things I'm suggesting. They don't realize that I'm testing them, but I am. And I move them to a no. Now, if they come back and fight for me, I might give them a second chance. And that sounds crazy, right? Because we're all battling for business. And here I am kind of telling people to go away. And obviously I've built a nice business where I have the ability to do that, but still, that's giving me the best pick of the litter clients, because I'm getting the clients that just want to crush it and kick ass. And they're not going to wait a day or a month to figure it out. They want to hire me yesterday. They just need to walk through my hoops to figure out that this is the perfect fit. As I want to figure out. [00:14:30] Speaker A: That's amazing. I love that that's the best place to be. And if you want to do good work for all your clients, you got to say no to those ones that are going to drain you. Take your time. Waste your time. [00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah. My interviews with a potential client are very similar. It's. It's a lot of check on where they're at and their sophistication as a business owner and their history. How many agencies you work with and how many agents have you worked with? Six. Over how long? Six years. Okay. And then, well, what was Your engagement like with them, what was your relationship like with them? How involved were you in monthly meetings and executing on things that they needed. And then you, you find out real quickly, you just, you just, you just. [00:15:11] Speaker B: Got off, get out, got outside of the landmines that you were going to step in a hundred percent. [00:15:16] Speaker A: And you know, if you're not asking those questions, you literally are setting yourself up for a bad experience for both sides. And you need to have, and I thought, you know, lawyers just a lot of time think about a client, you're trying to bring on a client, you need to bring that client on, assuming all the way through the process that they can be a five star review and they refer you another client and you need to build out your whole system like that and that you don't accept a bad client if you know that's not possible. [00:15:42] Speaker B: But here's the dirty little secret too, Kevin, that lawyers don't realize. You have to, you have to be active in business development efforts and marketing efforts to get your pipeline filled with quality strategies so you can pick the right clients instead of like, you have one opportunity and if it goes away, your heart sinks into your stomach or you're begging, trying to figure out how to get that, that little piece of business in. And so we, we want to. The easiest way to be successful in growing a law practice is to have a brand that everyone knows, to have a full pipeline because you've been active with relationships and networking where you have, you know, five or ten opportunities or more, you know, on the table at any given point so that you can move people to a no when they're not qualified or when, when they are stalling out and you just need to move them to a no and close the file to see how they respond or whatever it is that your strategy is. And it's the ones that only have one or two opportunities on the, on the table that are, that are, you know, that are just desperate and hanging on to those, those one or two. That's not a really great, not a great way to be. [00:16:45] Speaker A: No. That is 100% spot on. Yeah. If you don't have a lot of opportunities, then you can't be selective. You, you gotta stay afloat, you have to pay bills, right. So then you become reliant on whatever you're getting. And then your sales meetings become very bad because then they can smell that desperation, they can see that you're, that you're desperate. And then you start to just bring, lower your rates. [00:17:09] Speaker B: You start, you start making compromises, lowering the rates and doing things that are just gonna haunt you later. [00:17:15] Speaker A: They control the meeting for sure. Hey, Steve, you know, I'm not sure if you could drop that price, you know, by 200 bucks a month, you know, and then you're like, crap, yeah, I guess I gotta, I gotta do it. Because you have no, you're not in control. They're running well. [00:17:30] Speaker B: And then they end, then they, then they have again. They smell the blood in the water like a shark and they realize, hey, this is someone that, you know, I can use and abuse. And you know, I think lawyers that have clients like that, whether they're your clients or your partner's clients, you really, you start to realize very quickly that this is, these are not the people you, these are not your people. You want to work with your people. Maybe that's the next place to go is if you're not, if you're not in a position to interview and evaluate a number of different clients for you, you end up working with people you don't really enjoy. And that's not, that's not the long term plan for. It shouldn't be the long term plan for lawyers to work with people they don't enjoy, people that don't pay, people that you have to have tough conversations with all the time. They don't appreciate your work. That's going to get old real quick when people leave, leave the business of law, the practice of law or whatever. A lot of times it comes down to that. They're just doing, they're just not happy because the people that they're surrounding themselves with aren't their people. [00:18:22] Speaker A: I mean, just think about your employees or your team. You know, hopefully, hopefully you're hiring people that you want to work with that are cultural fit, that you enjoy being around. You know, why would your clients be any different? Right? [00:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:35] Speaker A: And your clients take a lot of your time and they want a lot of your time. And why not have a bunch of clients that you enjoy, the phone call that's coming in for, jumping on that meeting with them, working to solve their problem. So a hundred percent. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I just stopped working Fridays about a month ago, a month and a half ago. And but here's the, here's the, here's the rub. Here's the rub. I love what I do. And so I'm meeting and telling my clients I'm not working on Fridays. But, but if you have something for me, if you need me, just give me a call. And so now I have a lunch, now I have a couple calls scheduled for Friday. And it's, it's cool. I don't have a tea time plan or anything. So it's, you know, it's nice not to schedule stuff on Friday, but to know that, that if I want to meet with someone or if they need me in a pinch and I enjoy the interaction, I enjoy, oh, I just left a conference and this, this didn't work the way I wanted. Or I'm interviewing for a new, new, you know, new firm and this is how the interview went. I want to be involved in all those calls because I enjoy them. And that might be a sickness of mine, but it's, but it's, it's my own sickness. But it's that, that's the beauty of loving what you do, and that's the beauty of, of, of, of finding a coach, finding a lawyer that really cares about you and cares about the future of your business. I don't know that, that, that all of us are like that or all coaches and marketing agencies and vendors are like that. But if you find the ones that are, that's going to be special. Yeah. Not going to be leaving them too soon. [00:19:58] Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. This is, you know, for me, I love doing what I do. The podcast, the marketing, the clients. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Like you mentioned me talking business. You just, you'll be on a plane and someone's got a, you know, a pet store and you want to hear about, you know, what they're charging for kibble and the kind of profit and how do they, you know, manage the inventory or whatever, and it's just interest. Business is interesting. [00:20:20] Speaker A: 100%. [00:20:20] Speaker B: And to me, but, you know, some people, it's not. [00:20:23] Speaker A: Well, I mean, that's probably for me, you know, I was selling seed before we were recording this. Marketing is not necessarily my passion. Like talking about SEO. I, I love doing that. I can, I can talk a lot. My people are way smarter. I just listen to what they tell me. I love the business side of it. And so I, I work that into everything we do here and understanding the business of the law firm. And I, you know, they're, they're. Sometimes they're kind of like, well, why don't you ask me more questions about my SEO or my specific marketing thing? It's like, well, we're not there yet. You know, I gotta understand the business, how sophisticated you are in your business. Do you track your numbers? How's your intake? You know, what's your past history with marketing agencies? How do you communicate all these things? Like, that's how we can figure out, you know, if we're a fit and how we can fix the problem and, you know, that's just, that's just the way you gotta be. So not everyone's like that. I don't think. I, I was off this Monday and Tuesday to your Friday, your Friday, all Fridays. So Monday, Tuesday took off, ended up not going out of town. So me and my wife stayed local because the kids are going back to school. And she took the whole week off. I was like, you got, I'll give you two days. Well, my wife doesn't get up super early where she's, she was off all week. She wanted to sleep in. My kids definitely don't get up early because they're in summer break still. So I worked till 1 o', clock, 1pm every day, Monday and Tuesday, but I was off all day. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you know, that's it. That's it. [00:21:46] Speaker A: But I didn't have to. [00:21:47] Speaker B: But, but I mean, getting back, getting back to business development a little bit. I think, I think the lawyers that are listening need to understand that business develop for many lawyers, whether you're running a law practice or you're a lawyer at a law practice, that it's you Inc. It's your business under the umbrella that you're in. And that business development for many attorneys is at the root of having and owning that freedom. The control, the freedom, the independence, the finances. Everything can come back. You know, you obviously have to perform the work or have other people perform the work. And you've got widgets to make and those need to happen. But it's, it's the, it's the selling of the legal services that, you know, when I talk about like, what is be that lawyer? What, what, what do you mean, that lawyer? Well, that's the lawyer that's bringing in all the business. Everybody's looking up to that individual because that's the person that, that we all want to emulate and admire. Then that's not about them being a great lawyer. It's not about them being a great manager of people. Those things can happen too. But somebody's got to bring in the business, bring in the bacon. And that's where business development really comes in. It's like, you know, getting to your first half a million or a million or building out a law firm without good business development etiquette. It's very challenging. [00:22:59] Speaker A: Well, you know, to your point, a full pipeline of qualified leads will solve a lot of problems. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it sure takes a lot of pressure off, like, you know, where's my Next meal coming from all the way to, you know, how are we going to do better than last year? Last year was our best year. How are we going to do. And by the way, I'm not putting this out there to be a fear monger, but is everything okay right now in the world? Like, I don't think so. I think I can't remember a time in my life, 55 years on this planet where things have been less uncertain, less clear and we're just sort of waiting to see like what's going to happen. I think some people are prepared for the worst and other people aren't. But I wouldn't want to be someone living check to check right now, I'll tell you that much. You know, people that make a million dollars a year and spend a million dollars a year, they better start thinking about, you know, what's going to be like in six months or a year when, when, you know, beef prices has doubled and farmers are, you know, you can't get your, you know, food is going to go up an insane, I mean, yeah, I want, you know, it's, it's some crazy scary stuff going on. [00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah. I taking over. [00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah. What's going to happen there? Where are the jobs? Like, it's just, it's just this unknown place. But it's not like we haven't had recessions before that we haven't dealt with difficult times before. I mean, we had went through Covid not that long ago. That was messed up. Right. But, but I feel like people are just like businesses as usual, and it's not. And in six months from now, people are going to be regretting they didn't make some pretty significant decisions today. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, to Steve's, if you can get good at business development, good at networking, good at sales, you're going to have no problem anywhere you go if you stay a lawyer or not. It's just a good skill to have. It's a good thing to have. And in everyday life, it's not just, it's not just signing up a client or whatever. It's. It's with everything you do. Right. It's having good conversations, asking good questions so that you can come up with a solution. Whether that's family, your wife or spouse or whatever, it's all sales. At the end of the day, you know, if you have an agenda, Steve, to try to get an outcome, you're selling, you're making your case, you're trying to figure out a solution. And at the end of the day, that's that's all selling. Yeah. [00:25:07] Speaker B: I mean, the, the concept of sales free selling in, in that book. I wrote that book, like 12 years ago as a parable. So if, if anybody's interested, it. It's about a coach named Scott. I'll give you a little secret. It's me and three clients that, that work with him, and he kind of. You get a really good flavor for what it's like to work with a coach, what it's like to work with me. But most importantly, it talks about the philosophy and the steps of sales free selling. So business development as a process where you don't have to pitch and convince and sell, it's really more about how do we walk a buyer through a buying decision to a win, win outcome? Is that a fit and we're going to work together, or is it that they're not qualified or there isn't a fit and we can move them to a no or they can move us to a no? Fine. But we know why. A lot of times the frustration in business development is that we, you know, we'll think about it, we'll get back to you, we'll let you know. And they don't. And you have $10,000 a month on the line or $100,000 matter on the line, and you're just wondering why they're not responding to you. You want to have a system where you know why it's not a fit, and you can move it to a no without wondering and hoping that they're going to come back or having to chase. And that's something that lawyers don't realize. There's a system that does that. You just don't have that information because you haven't read it or seen it or heard it or. It's just, it's just foreign to you at this stage. But that's, that's a process that's going to be a much, much more efficient play than, you know, the. We pitched the crap out of this firm and, man, they loved us. I could tell they loved us. And then, you know, three months later you're going, where do they go? Why? I don't get it. I'm scratching my head. And there's a lot of reasons why they're not with you. You just don't know any of them. That's a problem. [00:26:41] Speaker A: It's not a good feeling. [00:26:42] Speaker B: It's not a good feeling. [00:26:43] Speaker A: Don't know what you don't know. Right, right. [00:26:45] Speaker B: And so the goal is to know everything, is to get as much information to build A kind of trust with a prospective client where they're willing to open up and share what's really going on under the hood, and they're willing to let you control the meeting in a way to. To figure out at the end of the meeting, is this a go forward. That doesn't mean signing them up, but it's the next step potentially, right? Or should we just end this? And why. Let's talk about it. I just, like, my fees are not nothing. Right. I'm charging a premium because I've been doing this for, you know, 22 years, and I'm getting great results from my clients. So, you know, if somebody doesn't have the money or the wherewithal, let's figure it out that. That, you know, and move it to a no. And I'll guess what. I will stay your friend. I will stay a resource. I will send you books. I. I will lead you into events I'm running. I will be any. Anything I can. But you're not going to be in my program because then. Because not everyone's paying their fair share. Just like working with a lawyer, working with Kevin, right? I mean, you're not the cheapest guy in the block. You shouldn't be. [00:27:44] Speaker A: No. Yeah, there's a. [00:27:45] Speaker B: There's a paywall to get. To get into Kevin's world. [00:27:47] Speaker A: It's huge. [00:27:49] Speaker B: It's huge. [00:27:49] Speaker A: It's just, you know, a hundred percent, you know, and getting to that. No. Saves them time. Saves you time and then allows you to refer them or send them the books, right? [00:28:01] Speaker B: You just nailed it. You just nailed it. I've got a dozen lawyer coach friends that I know are solid. And when someone isn't a good fit for me, I really do my best to, like, hey, who else can I get you in front of? Because, you know, you still need help. It just may not be me. [00:28:18] Speaker A: And the same with us. Like, here's what I tell people on when I'm presenting a proposal to them. We've done the questions, we've figured out what's going on. But to some degree. But I. But I find out that they just don't have the budget. Let's just say that I'm like, listen, I'm going to tell you what you need to do regardless. So numbers aside, it is what it is. Because this is your situation. This is the size of your firm, your location, your market. This is what you need to do. The work is the work. Whether or not you can hire us to do doesn't matter. You have to do internal yourself. Or hire someone else that's more affordable. But this is the stuff that has to be done. I'm not gonna tell you what anything that I don't believe needs to be done. So you can take my word for what needs to be done, but you can't afford us to do it. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Kevin, I mean, there's. There's willing and there's able. Right? I mean, if somebody isn't able to pay, I get it. Like, look, you're gonna have to make a decision. You're gonna pay me or are you gonna feed your kids? I'd say feed your kids. Now, if you pay me, you make more money to feed your kids. Better food or longer food. Teach, you know, teach someone to fish. Right. But that's hard to do. Now we're getting into chicken egg territory. Right. And the other piece of it is able. Like, there are people who have tons of money, but there are willingness. I should say not able, where they're able to pay. They just can't get over the fee or they just can't. They just. They just don't see the value or whatever it might be. And they're just not willing to make that investment. That's okay, too. But you have to have someone that's willing and able for this to actually work and move someone forward. So I think lawyers generally do a bad job of qualifying on the financial side. In many ways, that's a reason why they might lose business because they're not really understanding the willingness and ability for someone to pay and that they're okay with your fees. You're a thousand an hour. They've been paying 400 an hour. And you're wondering where they went. Well, I'll tell you where they went. They went to a firm that's 500 an hour, not 1,000. Because you didn't do any qualification to understand what. What their willingness and ability to pay is. [00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the. You know, them understanding why they should pay more. [00:30:18] Speaker B: Yeah. What's. Yeah, what's the value proposition? So I'm paying a thousand an hour, but guess what? The work's going to be done three times faster than the 400 an hour. Because that was a country lawyer. We're a big firm and we have that. We have access to get it done in short forms. Maybe you end up not paying more if you do, but you get a much better result. I mean, there's telling someone what the outcome is going to be and selling them on the outcome of what they're going to get. Right. You And I both know that's hard to do, and it's maybe something that shouldn't be done because we can't predict fully. They have to sort of come to the. To the. To the mindset that I see the value in this. I see where I could go with this. I believe in this. Other people have seen results with this. Then I can make the decision. Like, I have clients talk with one or two of my past clients for two reasons. I like that before they hire me, before we engage. Number one is I want them to hear not from me, but from other lawyers what the return on investment is and what they can get if they put their heart and soul into a program like mine. The other thing is, guess what? I'm back to this, Kevin. I get feedback from my client. This is a great. This would be a great client for you, Steve. Or this person rescheduled with you three times or. I don't think they're really gonna. They're gonna take action on the stuff. I have some concerns. Thank you for telling me that. That feedback is so critical for me to push back on that individual lawyer or to just move the lawyer to a no and save myself the trouble of dealing with a problem client or a client who's not going to execute. Because I'm in this to win. I'm in this to get big results. And if that's. If the. But the player's the player, I'm the coach. Right, Right. You're doing the work for your clients. You have to perform. I'm on the sidelines yelling at the. At the players. It's a little different setup. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, but at the same time, you know, willing and able. Right. So we could have plenty of prospects that are able to pay but not willing to put in the time on the firm side. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I noticed. I got into marketing for a few years, and I got out of it very quickly because I started to realize, you know, it was like pulling teeth to get them to send me a blog or to send me their website revisions or the stuff that just I thought was like, no brainer. I'll get this done for you in a month. The website, improve their intake. Not the case. [00:32:29] Speaker A: Yeah, improves your intake. You're dropping calls, we're sending you leads, but you're not filling up. Following up fast enough or. Yeah, or their sales suck. Their business development's not good. There's a lot we can't control, but we lean a lot more into that stuff because if that's broken, we. We. We hit a wall. At some point, we can't do do more. So those are all really good stuff, you know, super important for law firms or lawyers, I think. Quick story. Most of my firms we work with, Steve, are obviously established firms with many lawyers. They hire us to their marketing. So I don't interact with individual lawyers inside a firm very often. But I was brought into a firm by a friend of mine who's the head of marketing. They're a general practice firm. He's like, hey, would you come just talk to my lawyers. I got like 30 lawyers that are signed up. I go to the conference room and talk to them. And before that, the marketing guy goes, yes. I have this one lawyer who has his own website. He's got a Google business profile. He blogs, he's on social media. He's doing SEO. But he works for the firm. He's not an owner. He's just an individual inside the firm. I want to try to get my other lawyers to do even a little bit of what he's doing. They all have their own budget for marketing. I said, okay, that's weird. Different. Anyway, and so I go speak to these folks, and I prepared a whole presentation, starting at, like, the basics, networking, you know, business development stuff that you would be talking about. And it went all the way to, like, more technical stuff, SEO and blah, blah, blah. Well, so I sampled the room first, and I said, who here has their own website? None of them. Who here has Facebook or does social media or LinkedIn? None of them. Who here has, like. I was, like, running out of things. I was like, who here has a plan once a month for networking? Nobody. No one raised their hand. You all have a marketing budget that the firm is providing to you, and the more money you bring in, the higher that budget gets. And so my whole presentation, I just had to sit there and scrap almost the whole thing and just talk to them and say, you need to be networking every week. What are you doing to make time for it? Blah, blah, blah. Just going through the basics. LinkedIn basics. So I had to kind of like change my talk up. And so what I did, I said, all right, what lawyer in the firm makes them, brings in the most money? And they mentioned the guy that was not even at the room. He didn't attend. [00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:51] Speaker A: So I said, so he's not here. He has all the things that I was talking about that you should do. And he's the highest performing lawyer in the firm. Like, I don't know what else to tell you guys. [00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah, case, case, case closed, you know, Right. We just solved the mystery that was. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Recently and it's a very big successful firm. [00:35:11] Speaker B: But I mean, Kevin, one of the reasons I don't work with law firms anymore, I gave up law firms about five years ago, was because they wanted me to come in and like solve their problems. And the problems that you just mentioned with this 30 person firm, and that is they're trying to get their people to do something they don't want to do. And there's probably 5% of the legal population that, that actively wants to and is, is performing business development and marketing on a regular basis. Plan execution. And those are the people you think you and I are looking for. We're looking for the people that get it and are openly active and open to new ideas and directions. And they would give me 10 lawyers, a firm would give me 10 lawyers. And there'd be one superstar rockstar that would do everything I said and would kill it. There'd be one or two that were like, this makes sense. They'd get the plan, they'd start doing, you know, some good activity. There'd be seven that just can't wait to get back to their desk to bill hours again. And so here I am working, getting paid for 10 people, really working with three. And everybody loved it. Everybody talked, said great things, and it's wonderful. I don't care about accolades, I care about results. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Results. [00:36:16] Speaker B: And I just decide. I'm like, you know what? I talk firms out of spending money on business development training all the time. I go, look, you want to throw money away? I've got a great idea for you. Pay for 20 of your people to go through business development because you're going to spend 100 grand or whatever and you're not going to get jack out of it other than maybe a couple people. Send me one or two. Let's talk about who your best one or two are. And I've got a number of firms around the country that that's what they do. They just send me their one or two best and brightest, the ones that want to make equity. They're motivated. And I still evaluate the junk out of those, those folks. Because I'm not gonna, you know, work with just anybody as you have picked up on. That's clear. But there was one guy who was like, he's all full of himself and he's this big shot in the, in the cannabis space and he's got this going on and that going on. I was like, yeah, your ego is so big. And you know, just because, you know, he's got $5 million. So of course, you know, he's the greatest thing. But I'm like the reason they wanted to do. Because cannabis is kind of not going away. It's way down. So he's going to go from a $5 million book to a 2 1/2 million dollars book pretty quickly if he doesn't take some dramatic action. But the ego was such that he's never going to take coaching from me. You know, that's why it's so important going back to sort of the beginning of our conversation, you know, to identify the fit and to fully evaluate people before you engage. And so anyway, but that's that, that, that's at the heart of what business development's all about. It's. It's about finding the perfect fit and getting in front of enough qualified people and then finding that fit. And, and then I think you'll just be a happier lawyer. [00:37:43] Speaker A: 100%. 100%. I love it. We're on the same page for sure, Steve. So. Well, I appreciate you coming on and share today. If you, if you're listening, you don't know Steve, you don't follow Steve. I'd be surprised. But check him out. [00:37:55] Speaker B: It's your loss. No, I'm just kidding. But look, I've got the Be that Lawyer podcast. I've got five books on Amazon. The most recent one, be that lawyer 101 top rainmaker, secrets to Growing a Successful Law Practice. I think Eric was in there. Was in the book. There's one of the chapters, a hundred chapters of top lawyers sharing their best tips and secrets. My Right for Above the Law. So I've got a monthly column, maybe sometimes twice a month, and they put up my podcast videos. [00:38:20] Speaker A: I see those come out, you know. [00:38:21] Speaker B: Lots of great ways to, to get to know me. And I'm on LinkedIn, obviously. [00:38:25] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no, no shortage of ways to find Steve. I see his content on a daily basis, whether or not too much. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Right. I'm starting to think maybe too much content. Is that a thing? [00:38:34] Speaker A: No, definitely not. [00:38:35] Speaker B: No. Okay. [00:38:36] Speaker A: Never too much. That's the other thing. Put out content. There's never like to think that someone might have seen it. Every single piece of content and they're annoyed by it. That's crazy. A small percentage of your followers see anything you post, so you got to post often. So, Steve, I appreciate it, man. Please reach out to Steve, y', all, if you got any questions at all. He's got so much information on, on how to grow your firm, how to grow as a lawyer if you're solo or internal to. To a firm. So please connect with him. Steve, thanks so much. Anything else you want to share before we go? [00:39:07] Speaker B: Hey, no, man. I just. I'm. I'm just so appreciative being on your show and. And being able to have this conversation and maybe enlighten a few folks on what's going on out there, but just blessed to be in the position I'm in to help people in the way I do and that we could collaborate. Thanks, man. [00:39:23] Speaker A: I appreciate it, everyone. See you in the next episode. And thank you for tuning in, as always. We'll see you soon.