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- [00:01]
A
Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone. And it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guesswork out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We've been working with them for over a year and, and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on. And the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long term commitments tying you down. So what are you waiting for? To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit riseup media.com max law and rise is spelled with a Z. Riseupmedia.com max law.
- [01:20]
B
This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix.
- [01:30]
A
Matt so we're going to get into a lot of different things. You and I were chatting before and I want to get into the computer setups and all that. So I'm going to tease that because I think that that will benefit people a lot that are watching and listening. So I do want to get into that because your, your setup's really cool. I'll kind of show you some of my setup too, because you did some things with Alexa that I've got set up too that are really, really helpful. I'm assuming you do that with, with the plugs, but we'll second. Yeah, but for people that don't know and you've been, I mean, you've been doing things for a while. You, you built Zillow metrics and really built it around, you know, helping law firm owners scale. And what's really interesting is that you see a lot of law firm owners where they have plateaued, right? They, and it's, it happens so often where they hit this point where they have success earlier in their career, they plateau and they really don't know where to go from there. And so what made you sort of shift your focus in helping law firm owners scale?
- [02:28]
B
It's a crazy long story that I'm sure Your viewers would be like, holy shit. We have a couple clients that, that know this stuff. A handful of people do. I'm pretty open with it. But basically my kind of like foray into the law is I was a professional idiot when I was younger. So spend time in prison. High desert, San Quentin, Soledad, prison, riots, all that stuff. I was, I gang banged when I was little, got caught with guns, ended up going to prison at 19, and then in and out till about 25. And then I spent about six years on the run in a fake name. Somebody hit my little brother when he was like 13. And then long story short, like, I allegedly did something. They were going to give me eight years with the deal, another strike, and I was like, nah, peace left. And then that was a real learning experience. Like before that, like, life humbled me in a major way. I was stripped of everything. Everybody I knew, everybody I loved, down to my name. And it took me six years to really kind of figure things out. You know, I hit rock bottom multiple times because you kind of got a reset, you know, I was living like an immigrant pretty much, you know what I mean? Like straight up, I, I did not have papers and that's what really kind of got me into business because I was already kind of entrepreneurial before that and then ended up just kind of like BSing my way into a marketing director job. I'd been learning non stop on my computer. I'd already had a couple little side clients and different things like that, and these dudes gave me a shot and, and it just really kind of changed my life because it was my first real opportunity to have like a good job. And I've been making money on the streets. And then from there, unfortunately, what happened? Kind of plugging along, living this new life, I got caught with a gun. So I go back, I beat the case. And this is my foray into that. My first time in prison. I was a law library clerk on a level four yard in High Desert when I got popped for that gun. As soon as I got to prison, I filed a 1382. So notice and demand for trial. Boom. Cases got dropped. I had cases in a couple counties, like High Speed and some other stuff. And then I had to do my 18 months. Cause I got three years, got out. And then from there, as soon as I got out, the guys that had hired me as a marketing director, they hired me back. They, they put me up for two weeks in a hotel. Like they, they really just like dudes had my back, you know, I mean, it's Jim Stoddard and Sean Bishop. And there was Simplexity Ventures and even my old landlord. Then these people all had met me originally in like a fake name. Like they all put in on an apartment for me. And so within like 30 days, I was like two blocks beach in Pacific beach, had my job back. I had another co worker, just randomly like, hey, I'm going to add you as an authorized user as my credit card. It's going to help your thing and what, what's so crazy about it? And this is one thing I believe more than anything else. Going back to feeling stuck is, you know, intention is so important and like having and developing a mindset that just really goes, okay, whatever life throws at me, it. I'm going to just consume it in the flames, which is my like will and determination. And so it's like as soon as I got out, I'm bouncing back. And then here's my next foray into the law. So I get a call from the police department and I'm like, hello? They're like, you know, hey, it's Matt Burke there. So I'm already like, oh my God. You know, I'm like two months out. I got out November 17, 2017. So it's January 2018 and they're telling me I need to go pick up my daughter. So my, my daughter that's nine years old now, she used to live with her mom and that kicked off a child custody case. When it first happened, like, I didn't want to fight. Her mom had ended up going to jail for some stuff. And then now I'm just like, okay, I got a kid, I'm fresh out. I got all this stuff. I got, you know, like, she's depending on me. And so we ended up going to court. Her case got dropped and all that stuff. Long story short, she kept custody. And I ended up agreeing just because I didn't want to fight in court. I just literally wanted to see my kid on the weekends. And what happened though, and what I failed to understand at that time is if, if you agree to be the non custodial parent, like the best interest factors have been decided. And so she filed the move away order. She moved to North Carolina, which is why I ultimately ended up here. And at the time I was like pissed. I ended up moving to Jamaica. I got off parole, got, you know, I mean, got my passport was gone, you know what I mean? And so like we were talking earlier three times on a plane. My first, I drove it, that little story. Second time I went skydiving the third time. I was in my 30s, before I was actually on a commercial plane. And so went to Jamaica. Ultimately ended up meeting my wife, who's adopting Zoe now. So I spent two years in this custody thing. I didn't have money for lawyers. This was pre Covid, so you couldn't do like ex parte motions telephonically or stuff like that. You had to fly to court. And so I'd already moved back from Jamaica to go to North Carolina to be by my daughter. And then she ended up basically kidnapping her. National Center Missing children, got involved San Diego Child abduction Unit. And like, long story short, I went from a non custodial parent that was a felon fresh out of prison to full legal custody, full physical custody, no visitation, just everything. Just obviously, you know, the law, like they have to be doing a lot of bad stuff for the courts to go that way. You know what I'm saying? And then I ended up doing the immigration stuff for my wife myself too. And so, like, in another life, I would pro 100 be a lawyer. My mom used to call me like Esquire when I was younger because I would always argue and. But yeah, I don't think you expected that kind of. How did you get into this thing?
- [07:30]
A
So there. What there is a lot wrapped up in that. And I think that. I do think it's really. This is great. I think hearing that backstory is really important for listeners, and here's why. What's interesting to me is that whenever I was in undergrad and I was learning about marketing and it was all about the customer. Everything was about the customer. When I became an attorney, it's. Everything's about the attorney. Lots of chest beating. Lots of chest beating. And I find that really interesting. And I think that that is where a lot of law firm owners screw up as they focus on the attorney and not on what they can do for the potential client. So I wonder. So you had criminal matters that you dealt with both. You had some good results and some. I don't know if they were bad results, but you had results where you actually ended up in prison. Right. You had some family law issues where you had initially bad result and then good result. You've had immigration, which you did that. That's on your own, which is awesome. I don't think the immigration attorneys would like to hear that. But I do wonder what you've learned from the client's perspective that's helped you in the marketing part of it.
- [08:37]
B
In terms of like my. From the like putting myself in the attorney's shoes.
- [08:41]
A
Yeah. So what could law firm owners be doing differently to help when it comes to, you know, driving more cases?
- [08:49]
B
Yeah, I think just an absolute obsession of the client journey and client experience and just literally mapping out every single point of interaction with your firm from, okay, they're going to get to your website. Okay, what are they going to do? They're either going to call, text, or use a chat. Right. And so calls are currency. So, you know, but not everybody's going to call. So if you have them filling out a form, it's better. Instead of just putting like name, email, phone number, a message, what you want to do is have it more like a quiz funnel because it's going to one, it's going to pre qualify the leads better. And they can just literally use their thumb, like, hey, what are you contacting us about? Or for personal injury, you know, was it your fault? Blah, blah, blah. Right. You just have these series of quiz questions to where after you collect their contact details, they're just using their thumb and then redirect them to a page that ideally has a video of you looking directly into the camera and just letting them know what's next. And then even personalizing the thank you page. Because when you fill out a form, you can carry over those variables to a thank you page and put like, you know, Tyson, I'm sorry, you're going through this, boom, a video, and then walk them through the next step, even having a embedded calendar there. And then start looking at, okay, for every kind of pipeline stage that we have, like, you know, most people are using a CRM. So it's like new leads, we're making contact, consult scheduled, whatever, build out the communications you need there. So look at like what reviews do you have, what assets do you have, what information, and just essentially just try to anticipate someone's needs. Right? Because people are going to ask you questions, you're going to run into issues, document it, create a process, train people on it, and just keep testing it every time. I think that's probably the single best way to, to really like increase that. Because referrals are kind of like the lifeblood of everybody's business, right? You do good work, like it compounds and it's going to do great. So if you have that system in there, when you start doing SEO and Google Ads, local service ads, or whatever else you're doing to generate leads, you're putting them into a system that's going to basically create money. And a lot of times and probably actually the easiest thing to implement because that is a lot of moving parts is. Is just answer the phone. Like, money's calling. I see. Like, we do intake audits and stuff like that on clients. And I've just saw some things where you're just like, man, like, you're literally paying for Google Ads and answering the call like this. And so if there's like one single thing that anybody can do is just answer the phone. Like money's calling. Show empathy and use it to be like, for example, if somebody's calling, it's like, hey, you know, thank you for calling so and so law firm. This is Matt speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? Oh, why are you calling today? Like, find out if they have kids, what is their job? Like, small talk with them. Because that stuff is going to be what's going to help you close them. Because a lot of times I also find that, for example, family law and criminal defense does this all the time, is they'll pitch somebody, which is essentially like doing a proposal on the phone. Be like, oh, you got a DUI charge this much, right? And so they're not even visually seeing the person. There's no kind of body cues. There's. There's no way that you can kind of like build rapport or anything like that. So it becomes where you're just. You commoditize yourself because all you're doing is speaking a price over the phone. You don't know if they're like, you know, dealing with their kids in the background or, you know, surfing the Internet or not even engaged with what you're saying. And then they light up when they hear the price, and then you've already lost. And so, like making sure people get on video if you're going to do a consult, making sure they turn on their camera so, you know, that you got their attention. I think just that. That those two things is going to help people increase their conversions.
- [12:09]
A
You know, we had. We had a cares team meeting on Monday, I think is what it was. It was. The. The whole point of it was just a. It was kind of like getting back to roots sort of a meeting. You know, it's just kind of like a refresher. Like, why? What's the purpose of our care team? That's like. That's our intake team. And they do. They. They're really, really kind of a customer service team because they. There's a customer service part of it where they stay with the client from the customer service standpoint, from the lead all the way till the case is closed. That's why we call the care stand. But we talked about how important it is to build that trust at the very beginning and really create that connection some way. And we really do focus on that connection. It's really, really important. Whether you do do it over the phone or via video or in person, doing that is really, really important to the point where we will even put. And this was something that was created organically by the teams where they started to put notes inside of the actual client contact note where it would say something specific about them. For example, you know, it's the first day of school for such and such as kid, they're going to such and such school. They'll put like little details like that so that the next time we would talk to them, whoever talked to them say, oh, how did the first day of school go? It looks like they're going to such and such school. So you put those little details. But my question is going to be it's somewhat related to that. But I do wonder because you remind me a lot of some of the guys I grew up with where three of the guys I was very close with, two of them were neighbors, they went to prison. So it wasn't like I was hanging out with some of the.
- [13:42]
B
Sorry guys.
- [13:45]
A
Yeah, some of the best. But. But here's what I'll tell you. They were scrappy and they could figure it out. And they were able to really, if they had an issue, they could figure it out. And that's what I think is really awesome. And I wonder, I do wonder how much of how you've been able to build your business and grow the way you have and overcome. What you've overcome has to do with your upbringing and some of the things that you've gone through over your life, I think.
- [14:10]
B
So we grew up really poor. You know, my mom's a great mom. Like, you know, I love her to death, but like it was. It was kind of rough, you know, kind of coming up and stuff like that. And my dad was into the biker scene and stuff like that. And then, you know, he passed away. We had like a family friend that got murdered. So we had had just like different things going on back then. I think if anything it probably younger. I just kind of put a chip on my shoulder and made me more just like, hey, I'm gonna come out here and get it. Because I was really pretty buttoned down as like a minor. And then, you know, because I. I kind of felt, well, responsibility for my mom And a responsibility for my younger siblings because I was the oldest one. But once I turned 18 and I was in and out of foster homes and stuff like that a little bit. But once I turned 18, I just started getting stupid. And so by 19, I was on a level four yard and that's vaping thing. So I don't know, I'm sure, I mean, you know what a level four yard is compared to a level one. So it was a 180 design level four in High Desert. So this is like the shoe kick out yard for Pelican Bay. So everybody there's doing life or they're like, you know, coming off, not being validated. And so the lowest I'd ever been was a level three. But everywhere you went, especially because it was North Daniels, it's like everything in there is no hands policy. Like you're not allowed to fight. Like, if you're going to fight, you have to stab someone, you have to swap, slice someone. And so it's like a situation where you put all these people that are like basically, you know, killers, drug addicts, like, doing all kinds of crap on the street. But there's like this respect and like hostilities don't really happen like that. And when they do, like, you know, it's generally maybe a removal where somebody's removing their own, but that really, it's very interesting because when I got friends in the military and stuff like that, because there is a CoC, like there's target monitors, there's all this stuff that you go in there where you have to walk out on the yard and go, okay, how many of this group and this group and this group is out here right now? Where are the targets? You know, how many people on the yard, how many cops are on the yard? And so you get used to having awareness. And that's one of the things that I really learned in there that I felt has kind of shaped a lot of things and discipline too, because like drug use and different things like that were like really looked down upon. And so like you just could not be in that car and do that kind of stuff. And so it was mandatory workouts, mandatory education. And it was just like, I love the structure because, you know, when I first got like caught with guns when I was 18, I just got went to jail, got a suspended sentence, but I literally went, took the asvab, applied for the army. I was waiting one year past for my felony conviction to, to do the waiver. I was like, ship me to Iraq, you know what I mean? You ain't gonna take my guns. I'll just go there. But unfortunately, I ended up catching another case, and that's what got me my suspended sentence. But that just taught me a lot about discipline. And then I started, you know, when I went on the run, you know, because I felt at some point, you know, when I'd got out and I was kind of doing my thing, kind of felt like King Dingling to it to an extent. Like, I'm out there, you know, I didn't have a job, but I had my. I just was living good. And when I left, like, after, like, six months in San Diego, I ran out of money. I was flat broke. I had nothing. Like, I was literally went from, okay, what am I going to do? To, like, having you ever walk out of a grocery store and somebody's, like, trying to sign you up for something, literally?
- [17:07]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
- [17:08]
B
Was doing that. It was doing, like, anything I could to just get work and get money until I ended up getting the skills to kind of get that job. But stoicism really kind of changed my mindset because I feel like a lot of people that is either grew up maybe hood, or grew up in just different situations. They blame the cops, they blame this, they blame the system, they blame society. But, you know, the moment I started adapting the. The reality that everything is my fault, literally, because everything has happened from either an action I've taken or didn't take. And, you know, I'm going to live with it. And so that to me, like, once I. Once I accepted that, I was like, all right, cool, now I can change it all. You know what I mean? And it just got more where you don't kind of take things personal. Like, we're all in this system, and even if the system isn't fair at times, you know that the system isn't fair. So you're playing a game that you understand the rules, whether they're in your favor or not, you know, but business to me is just one of those things that it just absolutely changed my life, you know what I mean? And then, like, working with. With attorneys specifically, I just, you know, just kind of my background and stuff like that. I just feel like a lot of. Just a connection there, you know, I would 100% be a lawyer in another life.
- [18:13]
A
Yeah. I wonder how much you learned about reading people during some of those tough, tough times where. Whether it's, you know, walking into the yard and trying to figure out who. Who are the. Who are the allies, who are the enemies, whether it's, you know, you are, you know, people are walking out of the grocery store and you're trying to, you know, get somebody sign up or something. What have you learned about, you know, how to, how to read people over the years?
- [18:34]
B
I don't know, probably nothing. Nothing spectacular. I mean, to me it's just like, pay attention to people's actions, not what they say, right? Because people are going to say things and all the time, right, People are going to either, you know, there's people to lie, there's people that whatever. And so if you watch somebody's actions long enough, they're going to tell you that, who they really are, and then when they do that, believe them. You know, I mean, I think that's like the best thing to do is just look at how people get down, you know, how do people treat their spouse, how do people treat their friends, how do people treat their kids? And if you observe how somebody acts like that, then you're going to kind of know. And then from there it's like, as I've gotten older, I just, you know, I keep a small circle. You know, you got to really just stay focused on people that have the same kind of, you know, morals, you know, values and stuff like that.
- [19:19]
A
You know, I wonder what is it like? So you went from very modest upbringing to, you're living a different life right now, right? You're, you're raising your, your kids, soon to be four kids, in a different world than you are. So what is that like basically living, you know, you go from one life to another life that is completely different, that is way better. You've got your kids in a, you know, much better shape than whenever you were, you were younger. Even though it sounds like you were, you know, you were a good kid, you just kind of went off the rails a little bit after, you know, we're 18, but yeah, here and there. Yeah, but, but what is it, what is that like, you know, living those different, two different types of lives.
- [19:55]
B
I love it. So like, I mean, in the 90s in California, we lived in this spot called Hogsback, right outside of Red Bluff, California, where we literally hand pumped our water and shit in an outhouse.
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A
Wow.
- [20:06]
B
And it's like you hear that and you're like, holy. You know, so my first time going to a third world country, I was like, this is it like, like straight up. And. But I really appreciate it. Then I, you know, we lived for like four years on like basically a marijuana farm in Pains Creek. If you Google the population of that, it says like 32 it used to say 48. Like, there's just nobody out there. So I've lived in, like, Bum, Egypt, and I've lived in the city, and so I just, you know, I've lived in other countries, and so it's just this. I'm just kind of blessed, I feel like, to have been exposed to that because one of the things I worry about my. With my kids is like, you know, I mean, you know, I got rental properties. We got a nice house, we got a pool. Like, I take them traveling. They've been to, you know, Mexico, Bahamas. Like, they've been everywhere all the time. And I feel like that you got to try to figure out how to instill struggle within your children because it's like, you want them to have a healthy view of like, hey, dude, this. The real world requires a lot of sacrifice and hard work and effort. You know what I mean? Plain and simple. So, you know, does that make sense?
- [21:03]
A
Yeah, Well, I do because my. My wife and I have that same struggle. Where we came up, we came from, you know, modest upbringings, and we are. We are constantly trying to make sure that our kids are grounded and that they are. You know, we remind them constantly how different things are from our lives to their lives and. And how. And really how grateful they should be. And so that's why we do focus a lot on, you know, on gratitude and all that. So I wonder how you do that. How do you make sure that your kids stay grounded and that they're. They don't become, you know, so, you know, the typical, you know, spoiled brat that you maybe see on tv.
- [21:38]
B
So me and my wife were. We're pretty strict with our kids, but essentially, you know, we've all. We've always educated him. So, like, both Matt, who's three right now, he can break down assets and liabilities. Zoe's been able to do that since she was 4. But back then, it's like when we were reading that, you know, I read her the book, so. Things I want to read. I try to stack my habits with her. So, like, hey, let's read this. And she might like, nah. Like, nah, you're going to read it. You know what I mean? Straight up. I'm bigger than you. You have to. And so, like, well, that's a hell.
- [22:06]
A
Of a parenting hack, I'll tell you that. That's. That's a nice little parenting hack.
- [22:10]
B
It's nice, man, because we get to spend some time together. And then it's like my son, he see do. And so he'll like it's very hard to get anything done with him. So he'll just totally kind of screw up story time because you know he's going to zone out on, on a business book or something. Like we were reading Scaling with Systems or I forgot the name of the book, like Scaling with Systems. We were just reading that the other night, but that's one thing. And then even when they're out of school, like we have a subscription to education.com so I make sure she's like constantly doing work and doing exercise and stuff like that. You know, just making sure that their brain don't go soft, right? Because if you stay out for the whole summer, boom, you're done. And then another thing is like I'm not super religious, but my wife is. And so we go to church on Sunday. We've gotten involved in that. Then the kids go and I just put my daughter into like a, a Christian school and stuff like that because I just want to have them grounded with values. But the thing I teach, I'm not so much on little map but my daughters, it's more so like you can make easy decision. Or is it, what's the, what's the phrase? It's like easy decisions, hard life or you know, or no hard choices. Easy life, easy choices, hard life. And that's what I try to explain to them. Like when I see, you know, for example, if I see like a grown ass, able bodied man on the, on the, on the road, like just sitting there bumming money with shoes that ain't dirty, which I see all the time, I'm just like, that's a person right there that just made bad decisions, they made bad choices. You feel me? And so it's like you're going to have to experience like pain. You're going to have to experience discomfort regardless whether you're working hard to solve something or whether you're just being a victim of life. And so it's like you get the choice, you get to feel pain no matter what. But what would you rather do, you know what I'm saying? Like, and, and just try to explain that to them or sometimes take them to spots where they might see where it's just different. Be like this is normal for more people than it's not, you know what I'm saying? So like, and we can, we're all one step away from that. You never know. You know what I'm saying? Life can change very quickly, 100%, very, very quickly.
- [24:07]
A
Note. Yeah, especially I mean I do personal injury. So it's something where like people's lives are changed in an instant, you know, and things, things happen so quickly or you talk about, you know, you know, could be crime, could you name it could be a lot of different things. But I do want to shift gears. I'm going to shift gears when it comes to.
- [24:23]
B
I'm curious though, before we leave that topic, like, what's, what's your strategy with your kids?
- [24:27]
A
It's. To me, it's a lot of making things very consistent, process driven. You have and you know, surprising, you know, people hearing that for me is that what kids really, really need, in my opinion is stability. Right. You have, you have these routines and rituals. And so there are certain rituals and routines that we do on a regular basis. One of them is I talk about this a lot, but I think it's a really, really important thing is every single day at dinner we, we talk about the funnest thing except for date night. So I've got date night with my wife. So we're. And we also. That's a big part of it too is where my wife, My wife and I, her name's Amy. Amy and I, whenever we go to date night, we demonstrate to them that's our date night. That's our time to spend with each other. And we kind of, we try to show that love that we have for each other in front of them. So we try to demonstrate that to them so they can see that how important that is. But doing the funnest thing at dinner every night, so having really building these routines and then demonstrating that it to them as well. So the thing about kids is that they don't. It's not about really what you say to them because. And we, I do the same thing where I try to tell them things too, but that, that's not really what matters. It's what you're actually doing that matters. They watch you. They watch. They're always watching you. They're seeing what you're doing and they're just going to imitate what you do. And, and that's why I think it's so important. I think it's really cool the things that you're doing. And that's what we, we like to do the same thing with traveling and stuff too with the kids where we, and we do have our, our sort of adults only trips that we take, but we also have the ones where it's got.
- [25:53]
B
You need those.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Really, really important. But then we also do have the ones where we take the kids and so to me, it's a lot of it's about routine and consistency and demonstrating to them what the things they should and shouldn't do. And then I think, I guess the other, other main thing is showing how their actions can affect other people. That one's really important. And the way we, I'll usually do that is I'll say something like, you know, how do you think that makes such and such feel? Even if it's not something that our kids did, you know, maybe another kid had done something, you know, how do you think that they felt in that situation? And having them sort of understand that part of it and exercising empathy is really, really important.
- [26:31]
B
What you said right there too is like, what do you think? I think asking your kids that, especially like, like my three year old, you know, with him, he's not the type where you're going to just be able to like, I had to send him to his room because he was hitting, right? This dude comes back with boxing gloves on. I was like, I can't even be mad at this guy. But it's like with him, you know, getting aggressive or you know, doing all that with them just don't work. And so I've always found like, hey, kneel down, get eye level and just be like, what's up man? Let's, let's and just start asking questions and straight up. And so like when it's like that, they'll know. Like my kids will be, yes, dad. You know, straight up, you know that little Matt, like he'll be, he's three. He's the one that'll, you know, if Zoe or Maya doesn't say it, they'll be like, you didn't say yes, dad. I'm just like telling on each other and stuff. But yeah, I think the rituals are super critical. So you guys do like rituals with other family? Because you said you move closer to family now. So like holidays, stuff like that.
- [27:24]
A
Yeah, we did. We moved closer to family. Yeah. So one of them is the, the, a really big one. This maybe seems simple and a lot of people might do this, but we always read the Night Before Christmas and then the Grinch who Stole Christmas. We read that every single year. So I read the Night Before Christmas, my wife reads the Grinch. And so the entire family, all the little kids from the family, from not just our family but all the families, they'll sit in the living room and, and we'll, we'll read to them. And so yeah, there's little things like that throughout the year. You know, when we'll have, like, Halloween. We'll have in our neighborhoods, really big about, you know, trick or treating. We have, I mean, hundreds of people. It's massive. And so, you know, we have chili, you know, over at our house, and, you know, we have people over. And usually the grandparents are the ones. Whenever we're taking the kids out, they're. They're handing out candy. But what they. Our kids enjoy the most is actually coming back to give out candy. So they like to. We go out, we'll take. We'll hit a few streets, and then we'll come right back. I did notice this last year, our oldest, he wanted to go back out. So I'm not. Not super surprised. He's, you know, 14, and so he's wanting to go out and, you know, get some more candy, but without dad.
- [28:28]
B
He'S like, I want to go run. Run around with my friends.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Went out with his buddies. Yeah, that's for sure. But so let's pivot. And I want to talk about whenever you're looking at a business, right, and you see a law firm, and what patterns do you typically see in the ones that are growing steadily versus maybe the ones that get stuck?
- [28:48]
B
So the ones that are growing steadily, they're just. They're constantly focused on increasing leads, but they're also obsessed with intake, because if, you know, it's just such a critical piece, like, it is the point in which, like, that's where the money's made. And so people that fall flat on that is. Is where I see pretty much the most detriment. And then as they're growing, the ones that really nail it is they got their numbers in order. Like, they can tell you what their acquisition costs are. They can tell you what their cost per lead is. Like, they're using call rail. They're tracking their leads. But the thing where I see most people screw up and even like 1 to 4 million, like I see across different revenue levels all the time, is somebody might have a CRM, but it's set up improperly, or it's not being used by staff. And it's often a combination of both where they basically, they're paying for CRM, not all the staff uses it the same way. So you'll go in there and you'll see, like, tasks that are super late, that were generated or whatever nobody did anything with. Or you'll see stuff where you have, like, a gazillion leads and a pipeline that it's like, when do you close lost these things, like how Are you dispositioning these leads? And so nobody knows. And then what happens also is like, yeah, they're using co call rail, but it doesn't pass that data into their CRM all the way. Because a lot of these, like legal tech, like tools, like their integrations don't necessarily work ideally, like, you know, like Call Rel and Lawmatics, for example, that integration leaves something to be desired because it doesn't pull in the information the correct way because of how their forms work. But once you can solve that, you know exactly what's working and what's not, plain and simple. So you can sit there and go, okay, like, here's how much we put in the LSAs, here's how much we put in the Google Ads. Which one's making us more money? And, and if you're doing that every month, you're going to know exactly what to do. And ideally, if you do that every week now, you can actually do something about it. Right. And I think the data part, and as a business grows, it's like, well, what are the issues you deal with? Well, that your processes haven't caught up to where you're at because you maybe grew fast and you didn't have the damn process. Or then maybe you hired quickly, maybe badly, and then now you have people where you don't have your processes buttoned up or documented. Now you've had to hire a bunch of people. You don't have time and you don't have processes. So you're not training these people well. And so then that's where I see like the cluster of issues that kind of stalls firms out like that million, 2 million mark because they don't know. Like they don't have visibility in the, what staff's doing. They don't necessarily have like a framework for accountability. And then their data is kind of all over the place. So it's like, yeah, they can probably get to it, but it's like a manual true up where they might have to pull the leads from the CRM, pull the data from CallRail, try to match it up. And because it takes a little bit, nobody ends up doing it. You don't have the information you need to know what's working or not.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah, and so it's funny you, you, you mentioned all that because one of the things I want to ask you about is because you've said before that a lot of firms, they'll hit that ceiling at 7 million or at 7 figures. So at a million or less, they'll kind of hit that Ceiling and they won't be able to go any further. And what do you think is if you're going to point to one thing, right, if. Because there might be multiple things, you know, it could be, you know, marketing, it could be the operations, it could be a leadership problem. I mean, it could be a lot of different things, could be processes. But what do you think? Is that the number one issue, and it may not be the same issue for everybody, like, what's the main issue that causes that ceiling to be in place?
- [32:02]
B
A business is going to grow up to its most like, current restraint. Right. Or constraint, I should say. And so oftentimes it's going to be whoever started the business, they've brought it to that level and they just don't know what to do. Right. And then now it's like, you know, since you're a pilot, it's like changing an engine on a plane. You're flying, right? It's like you got all these moving parts, you don't have the time, you don't have all that stuff. And so I think one of the things that can help solve that is you get, you need a real operator. Like, you just really need to have like a solid, solid number two that can legit take stuff off your plate. So, you know, and have it like a divide and conquer type mentality, you know, because, yeah, you know, you can dump more in the ads, you can dump more in this, you can dump more into that. But there's so many moving parts in a business that it's like, you got to get the foundational elements in place, you know, And I think the data is probably the thing to start with. And oftentimes I see that people will get like, let's say a fractional something or, or something like that, or a marketing specialist. Right. And I see this a lot, actually, in the legal space where a firm's growing, they're humming along, maybe they're working with agencies and stuff like that. And then they get a marketing person that literally doesn't have the expertise of somebody that can run Google Ads or do SEO or build a website or any of this stuff. And I know why they did it. They're like, I don't understand marketing or I don't have time to do it. I don't want to deal with this shit, so I'm going to hire someone else to do it. And then what happens is they just keep like spreading their marketing dollars around. They're not concentrating their forces. And at the end of the day, it's like, you kind of got to bite the bullet and understand the stuff. And the easiest way to understand it is just to track the KPI' so you know what's working or what's not. Then it's not an emotional decision, but it's also constructive at that point because whoever you're working with, you go, okay, I need this many consults per week to make sure it's good. And that's probably the single best metric to track regardless of what practice area you're in. Like, if you're looking at your consults per week, that's generally going to tell you, you know, what your revenue is going to be or how, how you should close out each month. Because it's like, if you're going to track anything weekly, I would 100 track that on a scorecard, have people responsible for it, set up, you know, a weekly team meeting where you have a specific agenda and then you go through everything so everybody's on the same page. You always have next steps on, on how to solve whatever problem you're dealing with.
- [34:14]
A
Yeah, I, I think that that's definitely, it's obviously a good one, though. I started to grin when you're talking about fractional stuff, because I think that there, there are some really good fractional executives, but there's also some people out there that don't know what they're doing. And they, so people do, they'll tend to, you know, hire people because they, they think that that's the next step, because it probably is the next step, but they end up hiring the wrong person. And you know, that fractional person doesn't do anything. And they're, they're not type tapped into the firm enough to really understand, you know, the culture or anything else. And I think that's kind of interesting for us. Our, the, the, our key number, the one that we look at is our average fee. It can tell me a lot of different things. It can tell me, all right, maybe. And we, it always takes some diagnosing. But if the number starts to slip, all right, maybe it's, we're not signing the right cases. Maybe we're doing something during the process of the case that, you know, it's, it's affecting the case or if it's going up, it's the same thing. So it allows us to dialing, dial in a lot of different things. So having those numbers is absolutely important. I 100% agree with you. I think that that's, that's extremely crucial.
- [35:15]
B
One problem that I think that this is probably Relevant for anybody and everybody. But because I've. I've done this myself because I think at some point when you really need to start hiring and getting people in there so you can get bandwidth. You know, a lot of times when you're in that phase, like, you're busy, you just literally want help. Right. And the problem with. I think a lot of people do this. I've done it myself. I've seen it done a lot is like, hiring is a volume knob. It's not a light switch. Like, you don't. Just like, you can't abdicate your responsibility. Like, okay, cool, I'm hiring you a paid. I'm. Peace. Like, I'm gonna go do this. Like, you've literally got more work in front of you at that point, especially if you don't have the processes, but you have to be training anyway. And so I feel like that's where people kind of drop the ball quite a bit. And then they end up getting frustrated. And, you know, it's like going back to kind of the stoic route. It's like you should be blaming yourself because if you had the right systems and you had the right structure and you approached the training the right way and they had. You had zero doubt that they know what to do, then, you know, you can. You can sit there and, you know, pass something off and know that it's not going to just bounce right back to you, you know.
- [36:15]
A
Now you mentioned operators earlier and I. So I want to talk about that because I. My opinion has evolved over the years where I used to. And I was always kind of struggling with this where. Because I. I still practice law, but I also run the firm. Right. I mean, I'm really running two businesses. I've got one where we're running Maximum Lawyer with Becca, and then I've got the law firm, too. And it is kind of an interesting thing where I used to think you must have a CEO type that's. That's more of the operator, so the practice manager, whatever you want to call them. And then you have the person that. That runs sort of the legal operations side, the. Where I've evolved to. And I want to get your thoughts on this. Is that more of a. If you look at someone like Steve Jobs, and I'm going to use him because he's a great example of this. It's not like Steve Jobs was a CEO and head. He knew a lot about iPhones. It's not like he didn't know about iPhones. He knew he was very integral in the design of them and what they should have in them, what they shouldn't have in them, what the features should be, all that. Right. And I've sort of come to the. Shifted more to the. Yeah, you do need to have someone that is, you know, the practice manager type, but they also really need to be tapped into the operations of the firm, whether that's the legal operations or the non legal operations, because they've got to understand the way the firm works. And I wonder what your thoughts are on that.
- [37:36]
B
So what you're saying the CEO has to have that overlapping operator?
- [37:39]
A
I do, yeah. I, I've sort of come to that conclusion where you, you still have to be tied into practicing law in some capacity. It doesn't mean you've got to be taking depos every day and all that. But I do think you need to be tapped in in some capacity. So I wonder, because I don't think that that's a popular opinion these days.
- [37:54]
B
I mean, it's just like with anything else, right? Like marketing. If you're running a marketing company and you're not really like tuned in to what's happening in the, in the, in the, you know, across Google and anything else, right. Then it's like you're operating with a blind spot, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, yeah, 100 agree. Because, you know, part of the problem is depending upon what your team structure is, you need to know how it needs to be done in order to delegate it or hire it or whatever effectively. Because if you don't have, you know, the knowledge of how it works or it's not documented anywhere, how could you expect anybody to do it, right? It's never going to be done right. It's going to be done different every single time. And so I think one of the perfect kind of like, you know, if you can get in this scenario because like as a CEO, founder, you know, lead attorney, like you want to be casting a vision, right? Like you want to be like, hey, here's where we are, this is where we're going. This is what we want this experience to be. This is what we want people to feel when they come into this firm and stuff like that. And so it's hard to implement all those ideas that you have. And so that's where having that number two could be perfect. Because then you can kind of be in your zone of genius. You can ideate, you can read, you can study all these things and go, okay, we can implement this, we can implement this. And these might Be bite sized little thing like a personalized thank you page with a video on it or you know, the ability to automatically book or you know, a spreadsheet that tracks your KPIs each week and then you have your team update. But if you just implement these a little bit at a time, like create like I did this before, I actually had a milestone tracker when I got out where it's like got my license, got my apartment, got my thing and it gave me just this kind of like feeling a momentum where, hey, I need to tack things on here. And obviously like, you know, I was starting from scratch there, so it was pretty, pretty low. But over time it's like if you keep your mind on what's my next milestone, what's my next milestone? To be plotting those dates and looking at them and reviewing them. One, you can kind of appreciate where you came from, right? Because you should be playing the game against yourself. We all got competitors, but at the end of the day it's like all you got to do is be better than you were before and then you're just naturally going to get what you want in life, generally speaking.
- [39:55]
A
You know, funny you say because I've, I've wondered how that connects the, how you were able to connect the dots to, to Zillow metrics. Like what? Because it was like you had a, you, you had a past that doesn't really align with that. But then, so you, but you've built this amazing platform that allows you to track all those things and now it makes complete sense where you have these benchmarks. You start with these benchmarks to kind of put your life back together. And now you've built this thing that helps law firm owners do the same thing. I think that's really interesting. Are there other breadcrumbs that help me tie those two together? But because like that does help me connect that, the dots quite a bit because I was, I did wonder, but that makes a lot of sense. So what else led you to Zillow metrics?
- [40:36]
B
So I mean, I got it blasted on my freaking arm. So it was like, you know, like that, that used to be like a thing from the past. And, but the it, what it came from is when I was working with that other company, I'd worked, I ended up work like we worked with everybody, but I ended up working with a couple lawyers and they were just really cool, you know, and a lot of lawyers, what I've noticed, like a lot of them got stories too. 100%. You know what I mean? 100%. They're just smarter. They get away with things. And so it's like, you sit there and I'm like, okay, like, these are. Lawyers are not what people like. The stereotypical lawyer is not how lawyers really are. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Like, that stereotype came from somewhere. But I just. I literally don't see that when I. When I actually talk to lawyers. So it's. It's kind of crazy that that came from. But, yeah, it's. I. I started. I worked with a couple of them, and then after that, I was like, okay, this makes perfect sense, because the problem. When I would just kind of do marketing for anybody that would pay the invoice, so to speak, right? You end up working on things that you have you do not give a about. Like, I had a pool mosaics client, and then I had, like, a raised fish floor client. I had all these random things where I can tell you a bunch about raised flooring and cable management. I could tell you a lot about pool mosaics, but it's like, I don't care. You know what I mean? Versus the law. I feel like one, you're 100 empowered by knowing it. And it saved my ass a few times, you know what I mean? It got my daughter, you know what I mean? And that's something like, her life could have been. I don't know what would have happened, you know what I'm saying? Because it's like her, you know, mom literally walked out on her. She. She hasn't even seen her for five years. And so it's like, if I didn't really dig in and start understanding the law, like, so many people's lives would be different right now. I've been able to retire my mom doing this, so it's just, like. It's just empowering to know. And then, you know, we work with a lot of estate planning clients and stuff like that, so just learning how to build a legacy and just seeing what's possible. If just literally, like, my. My whole goal is to kind of just change my family tree and just be kind of like the source of, you know, people's lives changing and being better for generations after I'm gone, specifically, like, with my kids and family and stuff like that, and try to just instill into them, like, dude, don't make the mistakes. I did. But it's really not like, all the same energy. You can pour into something negative, you can pour it into something positive, and it can never get taken away from you. It just Compounds, you know, I love that message.
- [42:53]
A
I, I wonder if you have an opinion more from like the client perspective as to what makes a good attorney, what makes a bad attorney.
- [43:00]
B
I think what makes a bad attorney is if, if you don't care about the client experience, like they're going to feel it, like you're going to just know. And so every time you send an invoice, every time you, you know, send the retainer thing, they're going to be like this, like they're gonna, they're gonna hate you. You know what I mean? Like straight up versus like if, if they understand the, what they're gonna go through. And you walk them through everything and you make sure that the interactions are, you know, as good as they can be. Because somebody coming to a law firm, like you generally are not calling a lawyer because you're having a good time, right? So it's like something bad's generally happened in your life. And so it's like you gotta just have that kind of level of empathy for it and, and know that, yeah, there's a business to law. And yes, there's these things you got to do in business and it's very easy for someone to just think of it. It's just another case, it's just another client, it's just another, another whatever. But this is a person that's going through probably the worst thing they've ever gone through in their life. And so if you dismiss that or don't pay attention to it, like you're going to see it probably in bad reviews or people not referring you or things like that. So it's like just having empathy, I think, and putting yourself in their shoes or at least attempting to, which can be hard for, with some people. You know, obviously, you know, there's crazy people that call lawyers. So I also know that, you know, I, I see form submissions and different things like that where I'm like, good God, you know, but that is for sure, it is what it is.
- [44:29]
A
They usually come in around 2, 3, 4am in the morning and they're very, very long submissions and They've talked to 20 attorneys. Those are the ones that, that you to walk away with, walk away from. But so you have the three pillars of, of law firm. So you're, you have your law firm growth framework, but there's three pillars of that. Can you walk through the, the three pillars? I know that's a hell of a segue, but I did, I did want to ask you about that.
- [44:54]
B
I mean, it's literally just legion Intake data meaning, like basically you got to get leads in order for you to have at bats. Like you're going to have to talk to people to make money. And then when it comes to intake, like you have to answer the phone like money's calling. You have to continually secret shop your firm. You should be secret shopping your competitors too and understand kind of what they're doing and what's working. But that especially you have an intake team if you're not checking the calls. I had one client that we use call rail for everybody and we're running ads and a bunch of calls were going to voicemail. I'm like, what the hell? And so, you know, we kind of looked at it and we started listening to the thing. What we found out is his remote. He had a remote, like receptionist. She was voicemailing everybody to a voicemail that just said, text me no. Oh yeah. And she obviously got fired. But it's just like, you know, that's probably the worst case of something I've seen. But even when, you know, prior to Zillow metrics, I was doing lead gen for like a franchise, like a preschool franchise, and the salesperson that they had trying to sign up, you know, potential franchisees was literally pitching other franchise opportunities on their dime. You know, he didn't know that we had call rail and stuff like that. So, you know, if you're not spot checking things, guaranteed you have problems. Just guarantee it, you know, and not all the time it's going to be somebody out to just screw you over. It just might mean they need more training, you know, like, you got to keep repeating things enough. But yeah, that. That one's a killer one.
- [46:22]
A
Yeah. And so I know that you. So you recommend when it comes to like dashboards. So you recommend, I think intake, CRM and KPI dashboards. And if I've misstate any of that, let me know. But I think a lot of people hear that and it sounds great and like we have our own dashboards and that we're really happy with.
- [46:39]
B
But what do you use?
- [46:40]
A
So we use Zoho analytics and that's where Kasha, we have a CTO that's built those out. But that was a lot of work. It's not like what you have was the metrics where you have like, it's sort of. I wouldn't say it's like, you know, set it and forget it, but it's yours is to hook it up is probably a lot easier than what we did with Zoho because a lot of it had to be coded and everything. But I do wonder, maybe simplify this for law firm owners that don't have have dashboards because we can talk about it all we want. A lot of people I'm sure that have been listening, they've been thinking about setting up dashboards for years and they just haven't done it. So I what's a simple way that someone could get started with some sort of dashboard to focus on what's important when it comes to their firm?
- [47:21]
B
I'd say just literally Google Sheet and just have have whether it's weekly or monthly, you can have the columns right there and just hey, leads, consults, no shows, just track everything right there. I mean in the absence of if you don't have a CRM or your CRM's functionality doesn't allow you to visualize the data like you want, you know, you can use Zapier or some other kind of connection that just push the data in there. We got a spreadsheet that essentially we can connect with like Lawmatics or Clio and then it also connects with CallRail and so then it just kind of self audits so it'll look in the CRM and then it'll look in call rail to see if there's like a phone number name or email match so we can know, hey, this lead came from here, this came lead from here. The advantage of doing that too is for, especially if you're like using Google Ads is you can send offline conversions back. And so this could be super killer for like PMAX campaigns performance max. Because like the search landscape for Google Ads is like constantly changed and it's changed a lot now there's AI summary.
- [48:16]
A
It's going to change more in the future too. In the near Future. Yeah.
- [48:20]
B
Oh, 100% even. I don't know. I'm assuming you're in the AI.
- [48:24]
A
Yeah, big time.
- [48:25]
B
How are you using AI in your firm?
- [48:27]
A
So lots of different ways. We're building out a team of agents right now. We're using it for content creation from case management. The next phase we're going to be dealing with actually file reviews. That's going to be a big one where it's going to be monitoring files. There's a lot of areas where we're using it. What made me really, I've talked about this before, but what made me really, really mad is when OpenAI came out with ChatGPT. At the time we, Kashi and I were actually working with one of the big four accounting firm, one of the people that worked for them. I'm not going to mention the company, but was helping us build out an AI platform and for. And, and then Chad GPT came out and changed completely everything we were doing. So, yeah, we were, We. It's, it's in. Going to be in pretty much every aspect of our firm. What about you?
- [49:12]
B
Yeah, same. I mean, we, I've incorporated everything across what we do. Even personally, I've, I've started using it a lot. So like one of the things I've done is I took a bunch of personality tests like Meyer, Briggs, Colby, Wealth Dynamics, Fascination Advantage, uploaded them as a project to just kind of like psychoanalyze myself. Another thing I did, which was pretty sick is I went to questhealth.com you can get like the blood tests and stuff. And so they got like this $500 one that's got like all the panels you can think. So I've done that three times. But then what I did is I, you know, put my age, my weight, my height, my measurements and all that stuff, fed all that data in there and it's like, dude, you can't get. I've hired a coach before and like that level of. It's crazy the amount of like insights and facts you can get from that. Like, it was able to literally adjust my diet based on my, My blood stuff. I do mainly Carnivore, but then like, give me a shopping list, give me a workout routine, give me all the things, hey, this is how big you'll be if you follow this program. Boom, boom, boom. By this date, stuff like that. It's, it's crazy. But the only thing I get scared about with AI is how many phone numbers do you have memorized in your head?
- [50:18]
A
Oh, five to ten, probably.
- [50:20]
B
How many times have you used Google Maps to go somewhere you've already been?
- [50:23]
A
It's funny. I use it all the time. And that's from a pilot thing though, because I like to know how much time it takes when I'm going to get there. And I also like to know if. Because Google will reroute me if there's a crash or something. And that's why I. Yeah, that's why. But a lot. So I get. I know where you're heading with this a lot.
- [50:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, you, you, you're, you're older than I am. So like literally in our lifetime, our cognitive ability to remember things because I was alive. When you turn this to dial the phone, right, like, you know, if your buddy wasn't home, like, you Know, talk to you later. Right. But we figured out how to get to where we were going and we, we stayed in touch with people. But literally just in our lifetime, not even like a new generation or anything, our cognitive ability to remember things that were once just a normal part of doing things, you remember how to go here and you remember people's phone numbers is gone. So that's one of the things where I think that, you know, AI for kids could be potentially a slippery slope over time because it kind of like takes the need of a real kind of critical thinking and deep thought in some ways. But then it also for some people, like, it helps me actually think more because you can generate a bunch of ideas and kind of like throw stuff out there, but it's all context. You know, how much information does it have?
- [51:31]
A
There was that recent MIT study where they, it was about writing papers and it was interesting how it did talk about how it definitely affected the ability of the people to write because. And the other part of it is they, is the recall. People could not remember what they quote unquote wrote just minutes after they wrote it. They had no idea what they had written. And I do that parts, that part's really, really scary. So, yeah, I think we're still. It's kind of like with social media, it took us 20 something years, you know, to kind of figure out what to do and what not to do with social media, even though we're still making a lot of those mistakes. I think it's going to be the same thing. But I want to go back to what you said about the blood test because I used Function Health, which also uses Quest. So you schedule it through Quest to do that. I think it's interesting that they've got their own thing, but I, So I uploaded my data from, from Function Health and I also whoop. I wear a whoop because of. Jeremy Danielson had recommended it.
- [52:26]
B
What's a whoop? I've never. Is it. It like tracks your bios or whatever.
- [52:30]
A
So it's. Yeah, it tracks your sleeping, it tracks your breathing. Yeah, all the bio stuff and really, really good. It, you know, it, you know when you should sleep, when you shouldn't sleep, all that. When you should wake up. And it's really, really good. But it, it gave me like what, what my day should look, what my week should look like, what, what I should eat, give me diet plans. It also gave me like recipes, a bunch of different. I did the same thing you did. It was really smart. What's interesting is I want to ask you about. And then I'm gonna go to the video thing because I prom. I teased that at the beginning, so when I wanted our video setups, but. So you are. You're. You're doing the carnivore thing. I've been vegan since 2020, which was a big shift for me because I was a huge meat eater. Steaks every week kind of a thing. And I wonder, how long have you been doing the. The carnivore stuff and what kind of benefits have you seen from it?
- [53:16]
B
So, like, seven months. But I haven't done it, like, perfect. I'm not, like, I'm probably more keto than just pure carnivore. But the reason why I got into it is my brother Jake. He's a couple years younger than I am, but he's. So I'm 5 11. I'm. I'm 230 right now. He's was like 62 and 280. So he's a big boy. He. He starts going on this carnivore diet because we had went to Thailand. I. I did like, a team trip out there. He went as well. And, you know, he saw the pictures. He's like, damn, I need to do something about this. And so he went on this thing for, I don't know, it was maybe like eight months. And he literally got down to 220. He's never been that in his life. And I'm just like, dude, what are you doing for, like, workouts and stuff? He's like, I'm not even working out. He's like, I'm literally just eating pure carnivore. And he did not cheat at all. But so he did that. And then my mom did it, you know, and she was, like, sent. She was feeling better. My wife's got gestational diabetes right now, and so she's had some issues with, you know, like, blood sugar going up and down. It goes away when. When, after she'll have the baby. But she started eating kind of more carnivore, like, just not fully, but just steaks and way more meat. Totally, totally went down with me. I ended up going, like, took, like, three inches off my waist, even though I gained 10 pounds. Put on muscle because, like, I was pretty skinny in December. Like, I was. I wasn't really in shape. So this is pretty much this eight months. I've been just kind of on it. Not crazy. I've missed days and stuff like that. But energy is better. Like, the three things I changed in order of impact is Sleep. I used to get up at like 4:35 in the morning. And then I'd go to sleep kind of late too, because sometimes I just like, my mind's going, I want to get up and kind of get to it. And then I wasn't eating good, so I'd eat like, I generally eat breakfast, but then I might wait till like dinner to eat or you know, stuff like that. And then I just noticed my energy level. And so I started like, hey, I'm gonna only wake up at seven. I'm gonna just. I'm gonna make sure I get a solid eight hours. Did that. And then I changed my diet, started doing the carnivore, taking creatine too, all that kind of stuff. And then the workouts. But like, that just totally changed my energy level. 100.
- [55:19]
A
I wonder what the. So a couple things with the the. For people that even, even if you're male or female, creatine is massive. And there are new studies came out fairly recently where if you double it, if you're doing like 20 milligrams, there's massive mental benefits of brain benefits to it, which is, which is cool. But was the first 30 days on the carnivore diet as bad as I've heard?
- [55:39]
B
So me, I like eating like cake and like stuff like that. So that, that was torture, dude. Or not having like toast with. I usually eat eggs in the morning anyway, so I've always, you know, ate eggs and all that stuff. So that wasn't a big change. Pretty much already eat this stuff anyway. I was just also eating carbs, you know, so it was, it was hard. But over time, you know, I think once you can get it long enough to start seeing results, then you're going to be more committed. But you got to kind of break through to that first part where you're like, okay, I'm noticing some changes, but the energy level was like pretty fast. Like within like a week, I just felt better. You know, I wasn't eating chips, you know, any processed food, anything. I just eat literally like eggs, steak, chicken, turkey, tuna, and just cycle through them and just get an air fryer. So it's super easy.
- [56:26]
A
Oh yeah. Air fryers make things so much easier. All right, so let's, let's shift over to the video stuff. So I beforehand I was asking you if that was a real background and you, you, you surprised me with the answer because it's not a real background. It's not a, it's not one of those fake backgrounds, like a zoom background. Walk us through your background because that's really cool. And if you can, can you. Can you do what you did before where you changed it?
- [56:45]
B
Yeah. So just for, for everybody watching, basically what I got is a Canon camera right here. And I'm not using a teleprompter, but you can use an iPad for a teleprompter and have it reflect right there. And then I have a key light. It's probably going to be hard to show all this. I'm all plugged in, but I, I can send you some pictures later or something. Yeah, yeah, I got a light here. I got a light here. I got a light here. Then this is a TV back here. And so you can, you know, change like the design and kind of pop up however you want to pop up. Some of these are kind of crappy, but I end up going, kind of going with this one right here. I think it's diff different views. But what's good about this is when you have like I've noticed this for. And I think this could be good for attorneys, obviously, because, you know, you can do YouTube. I use OBS Studio. So I can literally come in here and just say like Alexa Studio on, the lights come on, I turn on Obs Studio, I turn on the camera and then Obs Studio, it's a, it's a free software that as it records, it's going to record you vertically at the same time. So you're, you're literally recording an MP4 of just a regular kind of YouTube format and a short at the same time. And then another thing, another little life hack. You ever heard of the Stream deck?
- [57:54]
A
Yeah. Okay, so tell me how you use yours. I've not pulled the trigger on one even. You can find them on Facebook Marketplace for super cheap. Anybody that wants to use them. But I'm curious how you use them.
- [58:05]
B
So I have like hotkeys. If I want to just share the screen real quick. I don't have it plugged in right now. But if, let's say I want to share the screen screen and not show myself or like have your, you know, picture appear here or here or here. Or you can add your logo so you can create all these different scenes in Obs Studio and then you can just create these hotkeys here. A record button as well. I haven't done this yet, but one of the things I'm going to do is have it set up to where Right now I can just say Alexa Studio on, the lights turn on. I can open up OBS Studio Click record and. And then as soon as it's done recording it up, it just puts it into a folder on my. On my desktop right here or my laptop. But I'm going to just automate that to automatically go to Google Drive and then automatically just, you know, create a task for somebody and click up to just edit the videos. So that's the plan because the whole idea is, you know, you can put a TV behind you, you can have a spare bedroom somewhere. You can put like a standing desk. Got the camera there. It looks kind of like shit because you're going to have lights and all that. It is what it is. But. But you can hop into a consult, you can hop into a video for YouTube or a video for like your thank you page or something on the website, like a landing page and just record content super fast.
- [59:15]
A
I love it. I'm going to steal some of these ideas. I'm. Now every time I talk to someone.
- [59:19]
B
As a stream deck, I'll send you a gear list too. I have a gear list in like a spreadsheet.
- [59:23]
A
Oh, that'd be great.
- [59:24]
B
That has everything I got and just little, little tips and stuff like that.
- [59:28]
A
So I'll tell you what, mine is a second. But the mic you have is really cool. What's the mic do you know?
- [59:32]
B
Yeah, this is a Sennheiser MKE 600. I have. I have like the, the shure one too, right here. But this one works really good. Like the, it's. It's super easy to set up. I have this and then I have the focus right. The focus right is like, it just makes it to where you can connect it to, to your computer easy. And then you can adjust the volume and stuff like that.
- [59:53]
A
I love it. So mine is. I've got. So I've got a screen here, A screen here. And then what I'm looking, I'm looking at you. It's. I'm in a. It's a teleprompter prompter. So it's, it's the prompter by Elgato. So it's. It's really handy.
- [60:04]
B
Okay. The only thing is I have that one too.
- [60:06]
A
I did that. Well, that you have to. At least on mine I did dial. I've got this big window over here. So I had to dial it in. I. Luckily Ryan Weber, he'd flown out. We had recorded some stuff and he had, he set it up for me properly because I couldn't, I couldn't get the glare off of it. Because if you don't set up Right. There'll be a glare from the actual lens because it's going through a lens. But I'm. I've got set up somewhere where it's. So Alexa podcast lighting off. See, the lights just went off. So that's. It changes everything.
- [60:31]
B
Yeah, that's cool.
- [60:32]
A
So Alexa podcast lighting on. So sometimes it doesn't do it. Alexa podcast lighting on the same when.
- [60:37]
B
I was doing it earlier there.
- [60:38]
A
So it's completely different. And then it takes a second, it'll kind of adjust because now the lighting is a little bit yellow and then it. See how it kind of comes down. So it does take a little bit of time to. To adjust it. It's pretty cool. But I do think the TV behind is really cool. How big is that TV?
- [60:52]
B
I think this is like an 85 inch TV.
- [60:54]
A
Yeah, that's a mass. It's got to be massive because it's like your full bodies in it. That's really cool.
- [60:58]
B
Yeah, exactly. The one problem that you can run into with this though is a like, let's say because usually when you're recording, right, you'll have like a key light or the ring light or whatever the light above you. You have a fill light, which is the light kind of like in your face. And then you'll usually have like a light right here, an edge light that's kind of getting the light here. And so whatever backgrounds you do like. See, this is like the light. Yeah, you want to have that. That's where you want to have like your edge light. So it's more natural looking. But the problem that you can have with the TV is that if you have a window or if you have any kind of light in the front, like I have to actually instead of have a front fill light, I put it off to the side because the light will reflect back there like super crazy. So that's one kind of like disadvantage of this setup. Yeah, I've thought about getting kind of like a little office just to have a studio set up where like there's not going to be no kids screaming or any kind of potentials like that. But this is what we got for now.
- [61:50]
A
Yeah, I actually set up a studio at my house, but it's hard to. It's. It's even whenever at home I get, you know, get the kids. But over here to my right, I've actually got my entire. This is like my law firm office over there. Like the desk is over there, which is different setup. But I've got the window behind me on that one. And you're right about the lighting, you'd be really, really careful about the, where the lighting is because otherwise you'll be able to see all of that in the window, which is kind of tough sometimes. You got to be careful.
- [62:13]
B
One of the things you can do too, like with the Stream deck, if you wanted to, like how I've seen people use it. I haven't set it up like this, though. But let's say you wanted to have like another camera angle. You can easily have a hotkey to switch to another one if you, if you wanted to do that. Or what you could do is have like a overhead. Like let's say you wanted to write and you wanted somebody to see whether you're writing on like an iPad or you're just writing on a paper and so they can still see you, but then you're like taking notes. And you can kind of make it like an interactive call or whatever, which, which could be sometimes good in sales doing it that way. But you can have like a little overhead the camera that you can just click a button switch and then they can see you writing.
- [62:48]
A
Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So Streamyard just added something where you can do a second camera in Streamyard. So that would be really, really helpful to have that. Sometimes it's nice to have a little cutaway, you know, where it's, it's a different, just a different angle. Kind of like we're, like, we started with the show where you were kind of looking at a different spot.
- [63:03]
B
Like, that was manual, but.
- [63:06]
A
That was manual, but it would be kind of cool to have like that kind of a view where you have, you know, different angles and stuff like that. I think that, I think that'd be pretty useful.
- [63:13]
B
Yep. That one you got to go with more of like a traditional background. And don't put a tv because then the angle of it, it's just not going to fit the same because with the angle on one side, you're going to be getting the TV from an angle. So they're going to be like, what the hell's up with that room? You know, 100.
- [63:28]
A
Yeah, but so before I wrap things up, I, I'll have one last question for you. But if people want to reach out to you and they got, they want to know more about Zillow Metrics or working with you, what's the best way of, of, of getting in touch with you?
- [63:39]
B
Just go to Zillow metrics.com. yeah, just go out there and then. Or you can email me at matt zillowmetrics.com so either way, and, and if it's, if it's good with you, can I give an offer to your audience?
- [63:50]
A
Go for it. Yeah, I think, I think people would love that.
- [63:53]
B
So we, we launched a chat called Zillow Metrics Chat and it's the only chat that I know of that integrates with Call rail and integrates with, with Clio. It integrates with Lawmatics, with Zapier, with make, with Acuity, with Calendly. So you can actually like book consultations through Lawmatics via this chat. And the killer part about it is it's unlimited chats. There's no per chat fees to get all the integrations. And we also have video. So you can incorporate video and all that stuff in there. It's 29 bucks a month. But we also have a free plan that we're going to just do free forever just to be like, bam. It's unlimited chats, free forever. No video, no integrations. But I'll give any person that mentions it on this audience a year of the free. A year of the paid one for free.
- [64:33]
A
Oh nice. That's incredible.
- [64:34]
B
No credit card required. So they just reach out and we'll, we'll set them up and they come with templates already. So we got pre built like criminal defense PI, different intake templates, but we can help build them out. My whole thing is like what would you say if they picked up the phone? Let's put those questions in the chat and then let's keep it to where they can just use their thumb as much as possible as possible because nobody wants to text everything that happened to them. Let's collect their contact info and then either book, you know, get little details that you can pre qualify the leads better. But outside of that, you know, but yeah, happy, happy to offer everybody that.
- [65:07]
A
Well, I appreciate that. I really do appreciate that. And so hopefully people will reach out now to get that. Should they just go to Zillow metrics.com or is there any special link or anything?
- [65:16]
B
Zillow metrics.com chat okay, so Zilla Z.
- [65:20]
A
I L L A Metrics M E T R I C s so Zilla metrics.com forward slash chat. Is the, is there a code or is it just. They'll just meant. You just mentioned maximum lawyer.
- [65:30]
B
Yeah, there's, there's a free forever plan anyway. So if they just sign up, just email me or, or hit the contact form and just say, hey, I'm, I'm a maximum lawyer listener. You know, I'm a longtime listener, first time caller.
- [65:42]
A
Love it.
- [65:43]
B
So, you know, want to share the love real quick though. Max Law man, I'm glad you brought it back. What was with the hiatus?
- [65:49]
A
You know, it was a lot of work. I'm glad you asked and because it's a great segue because I wanted to, you know, thank you for being a sponsor. You're. You're a sponsor of Max Law Con and so really appreciate you. You helping us bring it back. But it is a lot of work. It is something that we spend. Basically we spend. We're already planning 2026, so that's give you an idea as to. We spend all of our time. So every meeting that we have is about Max Lock On. So we have. Not about Max Locomot, but we at least bring it up. We have other projects in the works that I think and we'd probably be able to work a little, go a little faster on those other projects if we weren't focusing on Max Lock on as well. But. So that was part of it. It was one of those things where we were. It just. It was a lot of work and we decided to. Okay, let's take a little break from it. It was one of those things where I wasn't sure we were ever going to bring it back. But I do think at this point I'm not sure we ever won't have it because I. I think it is a really important one. I think I've never. We've never been able to. I've never been to another conference that has the same feel of Max Lockhan. It's just a different feel. It's. Everyone is there to, to lift everyone else up. It's so different. The closest I've ever had was going to Icon for infusionsoft and surprisingly they had gotten rid of theirs and I thought was a massive mistake. So it's one of those things where we're creating. We're bringing that back. We're bringing back maxlock on because I think people really wanted it. It's a great opportunity for people to meet in person, especially these days whenever AI is becoming a big deal. And so I think having those in person events are more and more important. Important. And it's funny because we've had the guild. We've still had in person events with the guild. Those are quarterly. We were having those four times a year. But it still wasn't the. The same as having the conference. You know, people still wanted to bring the conference.
- [67:37]
B
The vibes were good there, man. You took the words out of my mouth because I've been to a lot of legal conferences, but that just has its own kind of feel to it. You know, everybody's super cool. I'm. I'm excited to be back there.
- [67:48]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. Like I said, thank you, though, for. For being a sponsor, because it is one of those things where I don't. Hopefully people do understand. I don't know if they do or not, but we could not do it just with ticket sales. It is not possible. It's one of those things where it's not like we make a bunch of money. We're not even sure we'll make money on this conference. You know, it's one of those things where we. It is. It's a very tight sort of thing because the, These hotels and the venue spaces are extremely expensive. So we. We definitely have to rely on. On great partners like, like Zillow metrics to. To put things like this on. And the thing is, like, we're also very selective with who we work with. It's one of those things where we don't just take money from anybody to do these things. We will. We turn people away. It's. It's one of those things where we only work with. With good vendors that we trust, and that's. So. That's super, super important to us too. So I. I want people to know that too, because we don't just work with anybody. We don't. It's. We've always been very, very careful about, you know, who do we allow into the Facebook group, Who do we allow to come onto the podcast, all these different things. Because people do. It's. It affects our reputation too, you know, it's one of those things. It affects us. And so.
- [68:52]
B
And the Facebook group, that. That's one thing that kind of. That's how I first found you guys. And it's like one of those things where you can kind of tell right when you get into the Facebook group how it's ran, because, you know, you see a lot of these groups where people are spamming and, you know, it's just literally noise, you know, versus, like, there's a lot of good meaty discussions in there where a lot of times when I have people that, you know, fill out, book a call with me or stuff like that, they're just getting started. I. I constantly refer people to Maxwell Lawyer because I'm like, dude, just go ask a bunch. A bunch of attorneys. What phone system. Boom, boom, boom. What this? What that? What that? There's just Tons of stuff in there. So it's, it's, it's good. It's. You guys built an incredible thing.
- [69:28]
A
Well, thanks, man. I appreciate that. I think the, the thing we got the most complaints about is whenever we shifted to you had to submit your, the post and then it had to be approved because it was one of those things where we were definitely trying to prevent spam and sometimes people will have their posts just, it'll be denied and like, sorry, it's a, it's in violation of the rules. We can't, can't do it. And so sometimes we do get people a little upset with that, but it's really just to protect the, the community overall because we don't want it. We don't want there to be a bunch of spam in there. We just don't because otherwise people won't want to, want to be there. But I want to ask you the, the last question I ask you about is mindset. And because you've worked with a lot of different types of people, you've worked with a lot of different types of law firm owners and I do wonder because you, I mean, you worked with them, you know, lower stages of revenue. Higher stages of revenue. And I do wonder what, what you maybe have noticed when it comes to mindset and what mindset shifts maybe law firm owners need to make to get from that, that six figure point to like the seven figures and maybe the seven figures to the eight figures. So have you, have you noticed anything when it comes to mindset, when it comes to the, the highly successful attorneys and the not so successful attorneys, the.
- [70:35]
B
Highly successful ones, even if they're not successful yet, like they're, they're doing the building blocks and you see them moving, they're, they're just obsessed with it. Like there's really no, I mean that's just the main thing I see. Like that's what they're thinking about every day. They're not diluting themselves with other thoughts. They're, they're keeping, you know, different projects and stuff to a minimum. It's really just, hey, this is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to build. And then the ones that really, you know, get there the fastest, they've, they've looked at, okay, what's my revenue goal? What's my average case value? Okay, this is how many clients I need to get. Okay, well, how many consults do I need to get this many clients? And then they start working backwards to go, okay, this is how many Leads I need to get to get this many consults to get this many clients. And so what's a lead cost? And so it's just like, you know, you don't start with this data, but you start with a revenue goal. And generally people can have an idea of what their average case value is. And then there it's just collect the data until you have the data and now you got the information to really, you know, move. Because once you know that, then you can start planning like, okay, when do I make my next hire? How much revenue do I need to be at? Right, how much cash do I have in the bank? Right, because you want to have, you know, cash reserves before you start hiring. Because, you know, growth usually doesn't do that. It goes this and then it kind of goes like this while you're fixing and then it goes like this. And you know, it's like I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about that whole like the creative cycle, you know, I'm talking about where it's like you got, what do they call it? It's like uninformed optimism. When you first start something and then you start running in the problems and then it's like informed pessimism. And it's like most people just literally quit at that point, try something else. Versus like the people that just push through, they become informed optimists because then they understand, okay, this is just what I didn't know. And one of the ways you can do to fast track that is like you don't necessarily have to join a coaching program and spend 20, 30, 40, $50,000 right off the bat. You can just literally buy an hour of somebody's time, right? Literally like, okay, 300, 500, whatever, just tell me this stuff. And then sometimes you don't even know what questions to ask. But after series of those conversations, you end up knowing. So then when you go to do something bigger, you just have way more insights into what you really need to do or what you need to do next, you know, so that, that's been like, I think a really kind of good way to look at it is just source, source knowledge and expertise specifically for the problem you're facing versus try to find somebody that is just going to wave a magic wand and solve everything, right? Because you don't know what you don't know. But just focus on the one thing.
- [72:58]
A
The creativity loop that you're talking about. It is, it has not been more evident than in jiu jitsu for anyone that's done jiu Jitsu, you know I'm talking about. It is. You start with all this energy, the, it's the uninformed optimism. And then you're quickly, you're quickly told. I taught that that is not. You don't know what the hell you're doing. So. But it is this cycle where you, you do, you, you constantly cycle through, you get better, you get better, but then you, you, you go against someone that's, that's better than you or you learn a technique, get humbled. You get humbled very quickly. And so, but, but business is like that.
- [73:31]
B
I've never done Jiu Jitsu.
- [73:32]
A
What's that?
- [73:32]
B
I've never done Jiu Jitsu, but I do Muay Thai and boxing.
- [73:35]
A
I've, I've done boxing. I've wanted to do Muay Thai, but there's really no one around here that does Muay Thai. But I've wanted to do it. I've heard it really is bad on your shins, so. But it sounds awesome.
- [73:44]
B
Yeah, I mean, you're gonna wear like shin protectors usually when you're sparring, because if you don't and you're not conditioned like one, you, you can't train like that because you will be straight up injured. You know what I mean? Like, you're not going to be able to keep training without like shin pads. If you're really sparring, that's.
- [73:58]
A
Well, you, whenever we're in Nashville, you're have to show me some techniques because I think it's awesome. But thank you again for doing this. I know we went long, but I, it's one of those things where I knew we were going to go along because, you know, I like to chat. So it's, it's good. But I appreciate doing this. It's show. I, I've one. I've enjoyed this show quite a bit, but thank you for being a sponsor, but I, I look forward to seeing out in Nashville.
- [74:16]
B
Yeah, likewise, Tyson. I appreciate the invite on onto the podcast and just for your time today. Look, looking forward to see you out there.
- [74:23]
A
Zillow metrics.com check it out.
- [74:39]
C
Hey, I've got a question for you. When was the last time you drove over to another law firm near you, sat down over lunch and traded every business tip you've got, talked about what's working, what's not, and what to do next? No, see, that's what Max Lacon is for. It's real conversations with law firm owners who are actually doing this building, leading, scaling, and willing to share what's working right now. You could keep doing it alone, but let's be honest, it's slower, harder and way more expensive than getting in the room and shortcutting the learning curve. As of this recording, we've got 20 seats left to this year's event. Skip the guesswork. Go to maxlacon.com and grab your ticket before they're gone.