Future-Proofing Your Law Firm with Brian Mittman

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Future-Proofing Your Law Firm with Brian Mittman"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Maximum Lawyer
• Host/Author: Tyson Mutrux
• Episode: Future-Proofing Your Law Firm with Brian Mittman
• Release Date: March 11, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Maximum Lawyer, host Tyson Mutrux sits down with Brian Mittman, a seasoned attorney and law firm owner, to discuss strategies for future-proofing a law firm. The conversation dives deep into Brian's recent acquisition of a law firm on Long Island, the emotional and logistical challenges he faced, and his insights on scaling a legal practice sustainably. Brian shares valuable experiences on integrating new teams, adopting innovative business practices, and planning for long-term growth.

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1. The Acquisition Journey

Brian's Decision to Acquire a Firm

Brian begins by detailing his decision to acquire a solo practice specializing in workers' compensation and Social Security cases. Based in Westchester and New York City, Brian had a serendipitous encounter with a colleague contemplating retirement. This chance meeting led to negotiations that culminated in the acquisition of her firm.

"We’ll be acquiring the name, acquiring clients. Well, they have to sign up with us type of thing, but they're really her clients and it's really exciting."
— Brian Mittman [01:43]

Emotional Challenges of Acquisition

Transitioning through an acquisition is not just a business maneuver but an emotional journey. Brian reflects on his initial reluctance due to past negative experiences with partnerships, particularly a lawsuit with a former partner.

"And I'm like, I'm never doing this crap again, you know, with a partner."
— Brian Mittman [04:36]

Despite these reservations, Brian acknowledges the importance of fairness and the need for control in business partnerships. His approach this time was more structured, involving clear agreements and the hiring of a fractional general counsel to navigate legal complexities.

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2. Enhancing Legal Operations with a Fractional General Counsel

Hiring a Fractional Legal Expert

Understanding the necessity of expert legal guidance, Brian hired Hayley, a fractional general counsel, to manage the intricacies of the acquisition and ongoing legal matters.

"Having a real general counsel available is huge. And it's a mistake I've made in the past where I try to negotiate or do things."
— Brian Mittman [08:05]

Benefits of Professional Legal Assistance

Brian highlights the efficiency and peace of mind that came with having a dedicated legal professional. Hayley’s proactive approach ensured that agreements were meticulously crafted and executed, preventing potential pitfalls.

"She responded, not a problem. I'm working a couple hours a day... I had this little agreement and her analysis of the little agreement, and I got it all signed off, got it all taken care of before the end of the year."
— Brian Mittman [07:05]

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3. Merging Cultures and Building a Unified Team

Integrating Teams Post-Acquisition

One of the significant challenges Brian faced was merging the existing culture of his firm with that of the newly acquired practice. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining an arm’s length transaction to avoid personal biases and ensure a smooth integration.

"This was an arm’s length transaction compared to in the past. You know, Mike, my buddy who had passed away, we over time, he was a consultant for us for years... Just doesn't work."
— Brian Mittman [11:17]

To foster collaboration, Brian facilitated meetings between the existing team and the new members, allowing them to interact in a natural environment without the pressure of constant oversight.

"I had my whole team come in. She came in for the day. And even though I kind of led the initial meeting, I found some good excuses to get up and leave, like constantly."
— Brian Mittman [17:18]

Overcoming Cultural Clashes

Brian acknowledges that blending different work cultures requires patience and clear communication. He shares strategies such as using DISC assessments and job scorecards to ensure new hires align with the firm’s values and operational style.

"We've made some job scorecards and we're actually building some assessments of what we think is the right employee for that job role. And then we're going to take the potential new hires disk and compare it to that one."
— Brian Mittman [58:35]

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4. Financial Management and Process Optimization

Implementing Robust Financial Systems

Brian stresses the importance of fiscal health and process optimization in reducing stress and enhancing operational efficiency. By bringing on a fractional CFO and utilizing online bookkeeping services, he has streamlined the firm's financial management.

"Getting the fiscal health in order, particularly the processes and the systems. That hands down. It doesn't take away the need to have to make the donuts. But, knowing what's going on and getting even more insight into it now."
— Brian Mittman [45:25]

Monitoring Key Financial Metrics

The firm employs a dashboard to track critical financial metrics such as annual revenue goals, burn rate, debt-to-equity ratio, and liquidity. This proactive approach allows Brian to make informed decisions swiftly.

"The main numbers that we look at is we have an annual revenue goal and we look at it as annual revenue goal. Current revenue and the percentage against where we should be for the year."
— Brian Mittman [46:39]

Profitability Over Revenue

Brian prioritizes profitability over mere revenue growth, ensuring that the firm's financial strategies align with sustainable and beneficial growth.

"You'll realize what number is not really reasonable, or my number is way too low and I need to be thinking about it at a much higher number."
— Brian Mittman [66:52]

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5. Branding and Marketing Strategies

Evolution of the Firm’s Branding

Brian shares the evolution of his firm's branding, from complex logos to a more relatable and memorable mascot, "Ted," a construction worker with a broken arm. This shift has made the brand more approachable and easily identifiable.

"We ended up with Ted... Our little guy who's a construction worker with the broken arm."
— Brian Mittman [73:13]

Community Engagement and Sponsorships

Looking forward, Brian aims to enhance brand visibility through community engagement and sponsorships, particularly in adaptive sports and events related to the firm's specialty in disability law.

"We are leaning heavily towards Paralympics and some disability related because we are the disability guys, after all."
— Brian Mittman [72:23]

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6. People Management and Organizational Culture

Addressing Toxicity and Encouraging Positive Behavior

Brian discusses the challenges of managing long-tenured employees resistant to change. He emphasizes the importance of clear communication, setting expectations, and implementing behavioral assessments to maintain a positive organizational culture.

"You need to account for that to know how well you really are doing... You can say, let's sit down. These are the five things you agreed to. You're killing it on numbers 1, 3, and 4. What's going on with 2 and 5?"
— Brian Mittman [59:50]

Implementing Behavior Assessments

Utilizing tools like DISC assessments helps Brian's firm align new hires with the existing team dynamics, ensuring compatibility and reducing friction.

"We're now kind of, we have a potential hire now... Let's compare that person to this new person's disc because if it's close enough then we're going to get somebody more like him as opposed to somebody like this other person."
— Brian Mittman [56:46]

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7. Future Growth and Strategic Planning

Vision for National Expansion

Brian outlines his vision for expanding his firm nationally through regional growth models, potentially utilizing franchise systems. He also plans to sponsor sports teams aligned with the firm's focus on disability law, enhancing brand recognition on a larger scale.

"In the right way too... sponsoring at least a sports team somewhere. We are leaning heavily towards Paralympics and some disability related because we are the disability guys, after all."
— Brian Mittman [71:56]

Succession Planning and Leadership Development

Preparing for the future, Brian is focused on succession planning, envisioning a leadership structure where he serves as the board chairman, guiding the firm's strategic direction while delegating operational responsibilities to a capable team.

"I do vision my son coming into the business... But getting the right people that have the energy and the drive to want to make this happen."
— Brian Mittman [75:05]

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Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Brian Mittman shares his comprehensive approach to future-proofing a law firm through strategic acquisitions, robust financial management, effective people management, and visionary branding. His experiences highlight the importance of adaptability, clear communication, and strategic planning in navigating the complexities of running a modern legal practice. Listeners gain valuable lessons on sustaining growth, integrating new teams, and maintaining a positive organizational culture, all essential for building a resilient and prosperous law firm in the ever-evolving legal landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Having a real general counsel available is huge." — Brian Mittman [08:05]
• "We’re taking suggestions for what type of big ass party we should have." — Brian Mittman [48:10]
• "Profit matters is really what matters." — Tyson Mutrux [66:37]
• "Beneficial, profitable growth. That is our driving strategy." — Brian Mittman [70:43]

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Key Takeaways:

1. Strategic Acquisitions: Carefully planning and executing firm acquisitions can significantly boost growth and diversify practice areas.
2. Professional Legal Support: Hiring fractional legal experts can streamline complex transactions and safeguard business interests.
3. Cultural Integration: Successfully merging different organizational cultures requires structured interactions and clear communication.
4. Financial Discipline: Robust financial management practices, including monitoring key metrics, are crucial for sustainable growth.
5. Effective Branding: Developing a memorable and relatable brand enhances client recognition and trust.
6. People Management: Implementing behavioral assessments and clear expectations fosters a positive and productive work environment.
7. Forward-Thinking Growth: Visionary planning and succession strategies are essential for long-term success and expansion.

Brian Mittman's journey offers a roadmap for law firm owners aiming to scale their practices while maintaining operational excellence and a strong organizational culture.

Transcript

[Tyson Mutrix]

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[Brian]

This is Maximum Lawyer with your host Tyson Mutrix.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Brian, tell me about the acquisition.

[Brian]

Thanks for asking. Really excited. Prior to sitting down with you here, we are about to ink a deal, but it's done to acquire a firm out on Long Island. I'm based out of Westchester, New York and New York City. And about a, a year ago I had run into a colleague, I hadn't seen her in a long time at an event. We were just kind of chit chatting and somehow it came up and I jokingly said, well, when you're ready to retire, let me know. And I got a phone off the cuff, off the cuff. Like she told me she had just turned 60 and I was like what, are you kidding me? You didn't just turn 60? And we were talking and I kind of off the cuff said it and she called me shortly after that and said, were you serious? I said let's have coffee. And it took a little bit of time and I think it was more I was ready for it. I haven't quite done an acquisition before. I was going into partnership with somebody previously who unfortunately had passed away. But with this individual, she has a firm, she has a solo practice, had a couple like per diem attorneys working for a bunch of employees. Had done very well for herself over the years and two Areas, workers compensation, Social Security. And I was really looking for something in Social Security and that's her real forte and specialty. And we started talking and we were able to come to terms and she'll be basically doing almost an earn out working for a period of time. And we'll be acquiring the name, acquiring clients. Well, they have to sign, you know, sign up with us type of thing, but they're really her clients and it's really exciting.

[Tyson Mutrix]

What's the process been like from a. From like an emotional standpoint?

[Brian]

It's an interesting emotional process. And for me it's interesting because my history. So real quick and, and I tell this to my kids, hate this story, I say too much. But basically back in law school and I just got my 30th anniversary from the New York State Bar. The New York State Bar said being.

[Tyson Mutrix]

An attorney, that's a big number.

[Brian]

So I was like 30. And so I was in law school working for a court, literally a court street attorney hated the guy. And I quit one day and I'm out to dinner with my in laws and I'm telling my father, he says, come work for me while you look for a job. And the joke is I'm still looking for a job. So I started out in a family practice, so I learned a lot right away within, let's see, so 1995. So by 2003 he was retiring. In fact, he had had another partner. He was trying to set up a deal with me and the other partner. He ended up suing the other partner, kicking him out. So my first experience with having a partner was a lawsuit.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Wow.

[Brian]

So my only partner after that was my father in law. And I'm like, I'm never doing this crap again, you know, with a partner. So for years I've had different joint ventures and tried to do things. So this one was a little, you know, second guessing myself. Do I really want to do this? How can I have more control? I like to be very fair, but at the same time it's like I need to have some control. I had also mentioned I had a partner or a to be partner who had passed away about four years ago. And we were just in the process of merging our practices. He had no employees, but had a big marketing background as an attorney. So this is the first one where I'm really bringing in some employees. We're bringing in a caseload more workers compensation and a lot of Social Security cases with the focus being to develop our Social Security practice. And so I did a few things different this Time. It took a little bit of time, but I also finally said to myself, enough is enough. Let's really start talking terms. I also hired an attorney. So I have a business attorney. Had great guys over the years, but I don't know if you've ever dealt with this, like, in New York. These guys are just kind of old school. You do it this and that. And I never felt they had that kind of entrepreneurial business mind.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure.

[Brian]

You know, they knew all the details. But I would call this attorney up and be like, oh, you know, I'm thinking about doing this in New Jersey. Or, well, can you do that? Well, that's why I'm asking you.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, that's why I'm calling you. Yeah, Exactly.

[Brian]

Paying you $600 an hour. So I ended up actually finding a. I will call her a fractional general counsel. She comes out of the general counsel world. She has a solo practice, and she advertises herself as basically like a fractional cfo, a fractional general counsel.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So when you said you hired an attorney, you weren't talking about just, you hired an attorney for this temporary thing. You hired a fractional attorney that. That could go on as long as she does a great job for forever.

[Brian]

So, yeah, let me be clear. So I have the practice I'm acquiring, that attorney is coming, and it's going to be working. Sure. Yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

But I hired a attorney, and it was on a project basis, but I gave her a retainer. And before we even got this deal done, I had a couple little things that had to be done. I said, why am I doing it? And this is. Over the Christmas break.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And I felt kind of bad. I said, I feel so bad, but I'm getting pressure from this person, and we just got to kind of wrap this thing up and. And she responded, not a problem. I'm working a couple hours a day, even though I'm away this and that. The next morning, I wake up in my inbox, I had this little agreement and her analysis of the little agreement, and I got it all signed off, got it all taken care of before the end of the year. I said, wow, having a real general counsel available is huge. And it's a mistake I've made in the past where I try to negotiate or do things. And if. And that's not what I do. It's not what you do. I can read a contract, I can read a will. I can do certain things, but in my business, I need that outside input. And the really cool thing was, her name's Hayley you know, one of the things that she did was in this other agreement I had, I had a. I had shared space with somebody and we were, you know, getting rid of the company we had created to share the space.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Gotcha.

[Brian]

We separated.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Smart move, by the way.

[Brian]

Yeah. Yes, I guess I can say this. So I. Out. Trump. Trump. And this is not political. So basically we had this huge space.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Huge.

[Brian]

Huge. And I shared it with this other person.

[Tyson Mutrix]

The biggest space you've ever seen. Bigger than any space. Huge.

[Brian]

Oh, man. And. And, you know, we went our separate ways around Covid. And what we ended up doing was we built a wall, but he took some extra space. So we built a wall, he took some of my extra space. I renegotiated my side of the lease. I found out he never renegotiated his side.

[Tyson Mutrix]

No.

[Brian]

So build a wall. And the other guy paid for it. So not too bad. Yeah, good deal. So, but the point is, you know, we had this little. We wanted an agreement and be done with it. And it was really nice to get a red line copy back where she said, you need these two things and these other four things just depends on how much you really want to fight it. It's not a big deal. So we ended up at a great compromise, got this thing done. So I'm using her for the term sheet, the asset, and any, like, ethical issues surrounding this. And I'm excited because it's working out well. And I think in the future. I know in the future a lot of things. Oh, you know, I'm going to go into an agreement with this attorney and it's great to have half on board and it's worth every penny because you don't want to spend your time just.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. I've never considered bringing on some sort of fractional legal counsel. I think that that's awesome. What is it like negotiating with someone that you are bringing into the fold? That can be tricky.

[Brian]

Yeah. I mentioned before, you want to be. There's a control issue. Right. You want to have control. And rightly so. Especially after 30 years of this.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I realized they don't want to be controlled.

[Brian]

Most people don't want to be controlled. And you don't actually know what the other person really wants. And this was an arm. Arm's length transaction compared to in the past. You know, Mike, my buddy who had passed away, we over time, he was a consultant for us for years through our business coach. And then we decided, we became friends and then we're working together. I've had other people who I Knew as friends and tried to bring in. Just doesn't work. I think Chris Nicolasian talked about that in his podcast episode. And this was an arm's length transaction. So part of me was trying to figure out, hmm, I know what I want and I want to be tough negotiating, but at the same time, I don't want to lose the opportunity, even though I know other opportunities will come along. And I think overall, you know, looking at it, there are a couple pieces I probably could have been a little tougher on, and I think I did pretty well with some other pieces. And now it's, you know, kind of putting the screws to it or whatever they say.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, well, it is interesting because, like, you could. My guess is that you probably could have gotten a better deal. She probably could have gotten a better deal. But if you go too far in this arrangement, then it just all blows up because there is the, there is the part where there's the earn off and you got to work together. And if she, if she pushes too hard or you push too hard, there's gonna be a lot of resentment there. That's not going to make that relationship work very well.

[Brian]

Yeah. I think one of the important things is to also try to see it from their perspective. And I said to her one time during the negotiation, I said, look, you have built an incredibly successful business. One of her things is she just didn't want to deal with the business aspect of it anymore. It was really making her nuts. She loves working with clients. That's fine, that's her, her, her thing. But by any measurement, super successful. Right. She's, you know, had a building. She built and bought a bigger building. Right. And, and, and she has this whole practice going and she's done very well for herself and as a woman in this business, I mean, in New York, tremendous. In New York, tremendous. And, you know, I don't want to just say, oh, you know, come work for me and all of a sudden all that disappears. Right. And I don't know what type of necessarily like, you know, ego or thoughts the person, you know, she would have or was having about that. Right. Because again, it's somewhat of an arm's length transaction. And we were doing our due diligence. We went through the kind of the technical side. How many cases do you have? What's the average length? You know, a whole bunch of, you know, let's look at your contracts. Didn't know of any liabilities. You know, so we were going through a whole bunch of punch list items.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

But it was more trying to figure out, you know, we know we've never really worked together, so that's going to be a general challenge as well. Right. You're going from being your own boss to now working for somebody.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure.

[Brian]

And I said that to her outright at one point. I said, I said, you don't have to give me an answer now, but how do you feel about that? Think about it, because this is, this is real.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You know, I asked someone earlier today, they had acquired a firm and they would not recommend doing it. And. But I've always viewed acquiring firms as. Because they seem to have a bad experience with it. Right. But I've always seemed to thought of it as like a really good way of, of growing where you can work out these relation, these agreements with these. Maybe the attorney wants to leave the practice. Maybe they want to retire. Maybe they just don't want to run the firm anymore. I do think there's, there's a really good opportunity to acquire firms and be really creative with it. And so I. Have you, have you thought of this maybe as a way of growing in other ways?

[Brian]

I jokingly said, my CEO, Kathy, I jokingly said to her, I said, I know the ink's not dry yet, but who should we go after next? Yeah, but in, in all seriousness, you know, we had a. We have a very specific growth plan for this year and for the, for the future. And we spend a lot of time and money marketing trying to get, you know, organic growth, trying to do all the different, you know, things that we do. And this was the first time where, if I looked at the numbers, if I would actually, if we would take in as many signed cases as we did last year, and then I add these cases that are coming in, I've hit my numbers, my growth numbers. So what I've challenged my, my, my chief growth officer, my marketing director to do is we know we have these cases coming in, but let's not consider those as part of our core number for the moment. Let's see what we can do. Can we hit the goals that we set based on what we're doing? Because if we do that now, all of a sudden, instead of having our 20% growth, we're going to have, you know, 35% growth.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

In terms, in terms of the cases. So, you know, it's, it's an interesting way to look at it. And I do think that, you know, acquisition, it's. Acquisition is an interesting thing in our field. I have a great team that's helping me with this. In fact, I had done something like this, bringing a very senior attorney in to help grow the business and do this certain part of the business and basically made a very quick decision. Within a year, I ended the relationship. In fact, we still have a really good relationship and we refer him a bunch of certain types of cases.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Interesting.

[Brian]

But internally, such a non fit. And I promised my team that I would not be. I would always be the ultimate decision maker, but I am not going to ram something down their throat. And so they were very involved in this process as well. Meeting the individual and her employees and saying, wow, this is somebody I think we can really work with. But the challenge, like any other challenge with a merger acquisition, is you're bringing two cultures together.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Here it's a much smaller culture, so I think we can really monitor and pay attention to it. I don't know what the other acquisition deal was, but I'll have to listen to the podcast.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Stay tuned.

[Brian]

Yeah, stay tuned. But it is a challenge because again, you make a lot of assumptions. And that goes back to the. You want to plan for as much as possible, but not over plan and sync the deal.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure.

[Brian]

So there's a. There's a fine. There's a fine balance there.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. Did you get the teams together before you, you know, put the deal together and everything just to see if it was a good fit?

[Brian]

Yes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

In fact, I. Since she's coming in specifically to my Social Security practice and really is going to be leading the charge there, I had her, I had my whole team come in. She came in for the day. And even though I kind of led the initial meeting, I found some good excuses to get up and leave, like constantly. And I let the team just hang out all day and. And then I had, I had lunch with her and I got some great feedback and then they spent the afternoon doing stuff. And then the next day I met with the team and got the feedback from them.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So it's a clever way of doing it so that they don't know you're doing it on purpose. Just, you know, just. Oh, I got to. Let me go. I gotta make a phone call real quick.

[Brian]

Sorry. You know.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Even though I make this whole thing about like, you, you shouldn't have your phone when you're in the meeting, but absolutely.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you gotta, like. I do think it's. It's important that way. They're in like this natural environment with each other. I think that's a good idea.

[Brian]

Yeah. You have to. I mean, they don't have to love Each other or anything like that, but in particular, they're going to be working together. Yeah, I can't. The, the. The last time I had done something like this, I just assumed way too much. Right. I got sold a good bill of goods, as they say. And, and I believed it all. And by the time it started going, it was too late. So this time around, it's been different.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So I do want to talk to you about the. Your, I guess, would you call it like an almost partnership? You're with your. With your partner because you've always. I think you've always called him your partner. But did you. You never formalized an agreement, is that right?

[Brian]

So I own the practice 100%.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay.

[Brian]

I do have a senior attorney who I call partner, who's a contract attorney. A contract partner, for better lack of a word. And that's a combination of whatever his salary is, plus some incentive plans around things to try to encourage him to either be a rainmaker or to look out for what's.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I'm talking about your friend that ended up passing away. Was he ever formally your partner?

[Brian]

Technically, no. So what happened was, believe it or not, we were going to this maximum lawyer event in St. Louis in May of 2019.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And literally the day before, he called me and said he got these bad test results back and he has to go for more testing. So he didn't come to that event. And that's when he got diagnosed with cancer. And what we had been doing was again, he had this practice and we had already started what we would call our term sheet. You know, hey, what are the terms? How are we going to share? You have all these cases out there, I have all this stuff. And we had a, you know, we had done a whole bunch of stuff around and we started having an attorney get involved about, you know, buy in over the buy in over a few years was, you know, he had. He was a mass torque guy. He generated marketed cases and just gave them all out. So I was going to start sharing in things that existed prior to me coming in over the course of a few years. And then he was going to share in certain things. And so we came, you know, we're coming to terms. Then he got really sick and it kind of morphed more into a. What does it look like when I pass? So there was a buyout for his. His widow. So I technically own the firm. It's a Pennsylvania firm. I own the firm. I own the web. It's really the website assets and the clients that were in existence at the time. So.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So you end up. You end up. You did end up buying that part of the firm then, I guess.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

What was. I mean, what was that like going through knowing what was going to be the likely outcome? That's.

[Brian]

That sucked.

[Tyson Mutrix]

It's got to be. I mean, it sounds awful.

[Brian]

It was. It was. It sucked on a lot of. On so many levels. And, you know, there was the emotional side for me, of, fuck. I finally got a guy who was like my brother from another mother. I mean, literally, like, you know, I'm from Philadelphia originally. He's from Philly. He was maybe five, six years older than I am. And, you know, we had some people in the same circle.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

But there was a common connection there. And there's just a lot about why I knew that partnership could work because of how we got involved into it as he was a consultant originally, and then we grew closer together and understood how we worked, came up with these plans. He was a crazy, crazy planner. I mean, beyond brilliant with numbers. Like, he introduced me, my marketing director, and a couple other team members to ways of looking at data.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Years ago. You've always been good on data that I have never. Like, if I thank you, ways of looking at data that have just like, you know, we still use today. It's like such easy things. Like, he was a. He was this genius with throughput. Did you ever read what is Goldschmidt's?

[Tyson Mutrix]

No.

[Brian]

Oh, what was the book? Oh, my God. The Theories of Constraint. The constraint theory. There's a constraint, basically, you identify in any process where the constraint is, you work on it, then another one will pop up, and it's all about throughput. How quickly do you get the thing, the widget, through the system? And he was just a genius with that stuff. And so scribbling notes like mad and crazy. It's like when he was getting more and more sick, he would be sending me images of all his notebooks, and I'm just looking at his notebooks going, who thinks this way?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

You know, so, you know, and so that it was tough because you had somebody that really complimented you, and that happens.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So was he doing this to pass it on to you? So you had the information?

[Brian]

He just always done stuff like that. Yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Really.

[Brian]

He made sure he passed it on. And it was funny because again, you know, he was really good with certain things, I was really good with other things. And, you know, post his passing, as things settled down and then we got stuff worked out with his widow and what we're Going to do with the different things. We realized, like we had forgotten a bunch of things because we didn't have the attorney, we didn't have an attorney help us finalize certain things. It all worked out because we were all friends and we were able to make it work out. But.

[Tyson Mutrix]

All of the cases, I'm guessing the way it worked is after his passing, there's a certain amount of money, I guess was it just you buy out and it's over, or were there cases that you had together that she ended up getting paid out on?

[Brian]

So the way we structured it was she was on our payroll for three years and now we're four years. There was a buyout. There's a buy in and a buyout. Right. So what happened was he was bringing in, Mike was originally bringing in a huge backlog of cases plus potential future cases. And he was helping us build the attraction mechanism for our future cases. So, you know, there's a salary for him. And then we were doing a fee share and then we had this kind of funky fee share where in the first couple years he got more from his cases. But eventually they evened out and we were 50, 50 partners. So when he passed away, the deal was, you know, we did a, a buyout to his widow, you know, employee health care, stuff like that. And then there was a small value for the firm, which was an annual payment based, really based on the website. And then for the cases that were in existence at the time that he passed, we had a deal in terms of how they were split up.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Gotcha. So was he like a friend? Was he like a best friend? Was he like a, you know, friend? Because there are, I do wonder, like how close of the relationship, how close of friends you really were. And the reason why I'm asking, I'm not saying you're not friends, I'm just. And whether or not you think like having a partnership with like a best friend is a very good idea or having like a friend, but not necessarily like a best friend.

[Brian]

Yeah, you know, Mike and I were, we were good friends.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Yeah. I wouldn't say best friends. Right. We had just really met.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, sure.

[Brian]

Maybe 2015. And so we had become very close from working together. A lot of shared values, things like that. So, you know, somewhere between a friend and a. And a best friend, we definitely understood each other. We had our moments too, but we were able to talk about it and stuff like that. So coming into it was different than had I ever had. I gone in with a good friend right out of Law school or something like that would.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Now, I do wonder, like, do you think it is a good idea to go into, like, a partnership with a best friend? I. Because I feel like that would be really tough if he didn't work out.

[Brian]

Yeah. Having seen best friends break up, I think it comes back to the toughest thing for anything is having those conversations beforehand.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

I always call it, let's just do it and we'll stick it in the drawer. Right. It kind of sounds a little. Not quaint, but like. Oh, yeah, okay. You know, like. But at the same time, you know, having had a. Agreement with a friend, sharing space with the idea that we're going into business together, then realizing we weren't going into business, but we were still sharing space, and then we had to break that up. Planning it out way ahead of time is, hey, in case this doesn't work, while we can't cover all contingencies and we don't necessarily want to, here's what we want to do. For the most part. It's almost like a prenuptial, right? Yeah. You want to talk about maybe what you're going to do with kids, what you're going to do with the house or, you know, things like that. And you don't want to talk about it, you don't want to think about it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

No.

[Brian]

But that's why there's a lot of attorneys in business, because people get divorced and that business divorce is no different.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Do you think he was an advantage? The fact. This is such a weird question to ask, but do you think there was an advantage to crafting up an agreement knowing that he was going to pass or having a really good indication that he was going to pass because it forced you to think about all those things.

[Brian]

Yes. We started the agreement before we knew he was sick.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

You know, we put it on hold for a little while, and then we're like, okay, we really gotta do something. What I wish we had done is I kind of wish I had a general counsel.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure. Okay.

[Brian]

You know, like, back then, because I could have said, what are all the. What are the things? Here's what we want. Here's our business terms. Yeah, but what are the things we're not thinking about? Because a few of those things popped up.

[Tyson Mutrix]

What?

[Brian]

There was a discrepancy, for instance, between what we agreed to pay his widow period of time in the period of time we were paying for medical. Didn't even realize it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, wow.

[Brian]

We took care of it all.

[Tyson Mutrix]

As I say, knowing you, I just.

[Brian]

It was A non issue, but it was still an issue. It's like an un. It was an unnecessary issue because I would have expected a general counsel to say, this is fine, but did you mean to do this? And if we meant to do it, that's one thing. If we didn't mean to do, it's like, oops, no. Sorry. Yeah. I really think that, you know, unfortunately. Right. Death has a way to give some clarity. I read my Daily Stoic every day. I listen to a lot of my podcasts and really, you know, think about it. Right. They say, momento mori. We're all mortal. And some people more than others really don't like to talk about it or think about it, but you have to. And as you, you know, I see why as you get older, you don't put up with shit from people. You know, my. My wife and I, and I won't get into it at all, but we have a few things where sometimes even our kids, like, I can't believe you guys are like that. We're like, no toxic. No toxicity in our life. Sorry, guys.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I was gonna say, do we need to clip this next section and send it to your wife to see if there's. What are you gonna say after these words? I. I was really curious to hear what you were to say. The. The last thing about the acquisition.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Having gone through what you went through and being forced to think about some things you really didn't want to think about, did that help you in crafting this. This acquisition agreement?

[Brian]

Yes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Or I was wondering if maybe you just kind of, like, buried the old thing, didn't want to think about it anymore because. Which some people do, you know, or if it did help you.

[Brian]

No, I. In fact, I think it slowed me down a little bit because I kept thinking of more things.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, interesting.

[Brian]

You know, and that's where it's the paral. By analysis. You don't want to overdo it, but then also you don't want to underdo it. And I'm actually waiting for the fine. So we basically come up with a term sheet, and I gave it to my general counsel and I said, by the way, here's some other things I've thought about that weren't part of the agreement. But do we have to address or not things like, you know, the bank account and what happens with, you know, we have receivables. Well, you know, when do the receivables become my receivables versus. There's a lot of little nuance, and it's not a Deal breaker. But these are things that even in the negotiation, we didn't necessarily talk about because it wasn't a. I have a neighbor, a business neighbor on my floor, really, really nice guy. And he does some type of online educational training type of stuff. And he's been trying to sell his business now for a little over a year. And we're always talking business stuff. And. And, you know, he was doing his due diligence and he was, like, fascinated because they hired a broker and all the stuff they were going through and. And then they put out the RFPs and they had. They had two people, you know, come and, you know, do their due diligence, and they got like this close to an agreement and it fell through. And he was like, oh, my God. I was like, hang in there. So he's now in his second round of doing it, but in listening to all the kind of checklist items that he's going through, it got me thinking, too. Well, I'd be an idiot not to do it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure.

[Brian]

Right. You do yourself no favors by just assuming or over trusting. This is business. I. It's embarrassing as anything, but I will tell a quick little story. So I had a quote unquote friend who for about 10 years sold me my copy machines.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, no. Okay.

[Brian]

At least me, my copy machine.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay.

[Brian]

Let's just say after he absconded with about $100,000 from a deal that he cut for me and other people's money to Las Vegas and started his little shenanigans out there, got some of the money back. But I had a deal with two different leasing companies, and when I peeled everything back, that sob. I mean, lie to my face, like, I played hockey with this guy. I mean, lied to my face. And I got taken, and I got taken because I was unfortunately too trusting. And there is nothing wrong from the business perspective. Being a bit of a hard ass about contract terms. The worst thing that somebody says is, no, this is our contract. Take it or leave it. Okay. Right. You know there's company, right? You know, the. What, the phone company? Some other things. You're not negotiating crap with them, but you can always ask 100%. But you know what I learned in that particular lesson? Like, seriously, you know, you don't have to go overboard, but at the same time, I want to make sure when the final papers are signed that I am certainly covered and protected. And if the things work out in the way that they're supposed to work out, then everybody's going to be super happy.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. The people that are going to do that are going to be the ones that look you in the eye and they shake your hand and they're preying on your trust is what they're doing. But the ones that are going to respect. Respect you the most, not do that, are going to be the ones that are going to understand when you don't want to do that deal. Right. Like. Like this isn't going to work out for me. But the ones that really, they're going to take advantage of you are the ones that are going to prey on you trusting them.

[Brian]

You know, I'm glad you said that. I recently tested a bunch of different AI systems, you know, for, for like some medical chronology stuff. And every single one of them was, you know, hey, you sign up, but you get a 21 day trial, seven day trial, you know, whatever it was. And we really tested them and we picked one.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And then I told the other guy, sorry, you know, we're, we're done. And one of the guys said, well, could you tell me, you know, you know, why? What about it? You know, And I. And he was so happy. I was just honest and straightforward with him. And that's what it is. Yeah, and, and that's business. If somebody gets all upset, then you know what. Yeah, but better be scratching your head going, wait, what's going on here?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Who'd you go with?

[Brian]

Right now we're using a thing called superinsight AI. Okay, interesting. The fellow who created it, from everything I can tell, is a disabled veteran, and he created this to analyze VA disability cases, because you can do different reports. The VA disability report, Social Security disability report, and a PI report.

[Tyson Mutrix]

What a beautiful idea.

[Brian]

And it's tremendous because for our purposes, again, we don't need what the PI stuff is offering. We need basically the medical chronology. But there are certain things within Social Security, for instance, the listings, the impairments, and it's grouped that way. And my attorney who was testing it, she said to me, oh, my God, I was in the hearing, the judge was giving me a hard time, and I just searched the document and boom, boom, boom. I said, Judge, page 37, page 295, and we won the case. She goes, it was so easy, as opposed to, like, you know, looking at the judge's file and scrolling through and doing that. So, you know, the generative AI, stuff like that is going to be more and more. Oh, yeah, super helpful.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Just wait till you hear the. The interview with Kane Elliott. It's. We talk about some, some cool things. He's got some Good insights on it. Tell me about. You mentioned this. I didn't, I didn't know this. I don't know anything about the story. Tell me about the time you quit. When you left that firm. You mentioned you quit your job. Like what. What was that story?

[Brian]

So I worked. So I went to school, Brooklyn Law School. And Brooklyn Law School is on the, is on the corner of Jaromet street and Court Street. Court street, because that's where all the courts are in Brooklyn. Worked for this PI firm. And I'll say the guy's name, Sandy Rubenstein. It was Rubenstein and Flato. The reason I say the name is Sandy Rubenstein, if you follow the New York Post or any New York stuff, particularly from the 90s and the early 2000s, was like best buddies with Al Sharpton. He had cornered the Haitian cab driver market.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, no.

[Brian]

So I worked in this absolute pit of a law firm back while I was in law school. And I had been there for about two years.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Cab drivers are some of the toughest people to deal with.

[Brian]

But he just was a high volume. It was a disgusting office. It was all paper back in the day, obviously, but it was craziness. And I'd been there for about two years. And he had long hair and he talked like this and he has his suspenders and stuff. And I'd been there for like two years doing all this work, learning a bunch of stuff in law school. And he comes out one day and looks and goes, you sharpen this. Hands me a pencil.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You're a lawyer.

[Brian]

I wasn't a lawyer. I sharpen the pencil, I give it to him. And I walk into Jay, his partner at the time, Jay's office. I go, jay, I quit. And that was the story. And I mean, the guy, his practice is still, still going. Wow.

[Tyson Mutrix]

How is he now?

[Brian]

Well, I don't think he practices too much. His other partner is still doing it. But man, I'll tell you, I. That actually turned me off from PI work, really, you know, that and, and then, but you know, then I was talking to my father in law and he, you know, he does workers comp. And I brought the Social Security into the practice.

[Tyson Mutrix]

And it's a. Definitely, it's different. Like PI. The people you deal with, with PIs are different than the people you deal with, like comp or disability. They're just, it's just different. We're built differently. It's just. That's just how it is.

[Brian]

Oh, listen, my, my, my, my oldest is a PI attorney now. He's actually Working for a friend of mine. He's doing a great job, learning a ton. I had a tear in my eye. I went to his first trial.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, nice. And he was fun.

[Brian]

Oh, it was a blast. The opening statements are great. I'm like looking at the jury, you know, trying to see how they're, you know, gauging him. And then. And I'll proud papa moment. So it was in Rockland county, which is a very defense oriented county. So he ended up with not only a plaintiff's verdict, but he absolutely slammed them. They got 1.5 million, had a baby.

[Tyson Mutrix]

That was his. That was his first.

[Brian]

His first? Yeah, his part with his partner in his firm. Second. Seated it and did a lot of the motion work. But he, he was up there cross examining, doing all this stuff. It was, it was awesome.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, he's. Now he's happy.

[Brian]

But I thought he was really funny. So we're waiting for it. So I. We're waiting for the verdict. So we go to the pub across the street, right? We sit down and everybody gets beers, order some food. And all of a sudden the phone buzzes. I guess the jury came in and had some questions. So they all got up and ran back. And I go, I guess I'm paying for drinks.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I guess so. You know what? If you are, if you're going to be over there with them, that's. That's the least you could do. You have to be along for the ride. That's. That's awesome. At what point did you brand to the disability guys?

[Brian]

I would say that has to go back to around 2010.

[Tyson Mutrix]

That was early on.

[Brian]

I was earlier than that, 10 to 12. And our original logo was. This is another real good point for anybody listening from a pure marketing perspective. If a marketing person is selling you an idea, even if it's the greatest idea in the world, sit on it. So I had this woman who created this great logo and it was these magnifying glasses. And one of my partners, you know, he plays a clarinet. So it had a clarinet. And it was like really cool, you know, because you look into things really closely. Right. Sold a great thing. Nobody ever understood what the hell the logo was. And it was the most complicated logo to get onto shirts and to. So then we morphed into, you know, Pep Boys, Manny, Moe and Jack. So I always thought of the disability guys, the Pep Boys. Like, that's my idea was always just like faces.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And then we ended up with the most recent. We're probably a good five, six years into the most Recent logo, which is. We call him Ted. I don't know why, but he's Ted, our little. Our little guy who's a construction worker with the broken arm.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. I'm actually trying to visualize the Pep Boys are. So are they similar in like character design?

[Brian]

No, Manny, Mo and Jack, they were just these like.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I know you're talking about. Yeah.

[Brian]

Black outline faces. Yeah, like, you know, three faces. Originally we thought, oh, we would just have faces. And it kind of morphed into.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So what do you call your, your guy on yours?

[Brian]

Ted.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Ted. Why Ted?

[Brian]

I have no idea.

[Tyson Mutrix]

No idea.

[Brian]

And the really funny part is so like, you know, in filevine we have a test project called Ted. Test?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, Ted Test.

[Brian]

We just referred to him as Ted.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I like it. So you. There's a couple things I think of whenever I think of you. I think of numbers, which is interesting because you talk about your partner. I'll call your partner as like being so big on numbers. But there's that part. I think of you as like branding, but also like processes. I feel like you're good at all of those things. Do you feel like you're good at all those things?

[Brian]

I appreciate you saying that. I know that I'm good at them, but I don't feel all the time that I'm good at them. And I think I've heard you talk about this too. Right. Because you can always improve your processes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Always. Yeah.

[Brian]

You're always trying and sometimes you have to take that moment, take a deep breath and then you look around like, listen, I'm acquiring a law firm. There are processes there.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

But the gap between my processes and those processes, pretty significant with certain things. And nothing negative about it. It's just that I like to, and I've said this for years, here we are in Arizona and. Right. You can have a non attorney ownership of a law firm. I've been trying to build this business now for at least last five years as a business, so that when the time does come, I can be acquired if I want to. Right. Because what's going to happen is, you know, I'm sure there's some phenomenal lawyers and phenomenal firms, but when you take that to private equity or venture capital or whomever is investing, they're going to say, well, it's just your name and the cases, here's the value. Oh, but I want much more. Why?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

You don't have a brand, you don't have processes in place. I want to be able to say, I mean, it's old Fashioned. But say, hey, here's my three ring binder of how we do this. Here's how we do this. And it makes for such a different type of stress and decreased stress level. You know, the end of the year comes around, it's usually pretty super duper stressful for law firm business owners. There's stress there at the end of the year, but it's so different than what it was just a few years ago. We have so many things in place now, right? I have, I, we have, we. We brought on board a fractional cfo. We've had an online bookkeeping and accounting service for years now. We have our. It. It's. I can just. Things are things together. Like right. Right now, people are scrambling to do 1099.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Brian]

Okay. With our. People are doing them and they say, oh, what about this, this and this? And we look and say, okay, do this, this and this.

[Tyson Mutrix]

And yeah, there should be someone doing that for you. What is, what is the thing? If you look back at like three years ago, because it's nice. I, I can be at the office now. We were, we were closed, you know, the end of the year, which was great. It's so luckily I can do it now without a bunch of stress. But like, what is the thing that you can think of that's reduced the most stress for you over the last few years?

[Brian]

Getting the fiscal health in order, particularly the processes and the systems.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay.

[Brian]

That, that hands down. Right. It doesn't take away the need to have to make the donuts. Right. Get the cases in, crank those cases out. But, but knowing what's going on and getting even more insight into it now. Right. Oh my God. Numbers are down. Is it panic time or is it what's going on?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

And there's much more. The not happy with this. Let's figure out what's happening. And being able to. Being able to figure out that that's probably been the, the biggest boon to us getting second would be getting the systems for the actual legal work. It's always sharpening the. Right. Always, always, always. And then the biggest challenge we have right now and everybody does, it's people.

[Tyson Mutrix]

People's a tough one. So let's table that for a second. I want to come back to the people part of it. You've got a dashboard, right?

[Brian]

Yes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

And what is on your dashboard? Like, what do you. What are the numbers that you're looking at?

[Brian]

The main numbers that we look at is we have a annual revenue goal and we look at it as annual revenue goal. Current revenue and the percentage against where we should be for the year. We have a signed case goal. So it's the revenue, it's the signed. We have two revenue goals because we have a core business. And then since I refer a lot of cases out and UPI attorneys are nice enough to send me checks, what we do is we take a portion of that and we attribute that to the business that everyone can kind of share in our incentive plan. But you know, we don't control that other than we know what the average is for the last few years. The new cases we measure actually fiscally we measure burn rate, how quickly we're burning through money. I watch our debt, debt to equity ratio and our quick ratio, which is really the, you know, if we closed up shop today is, you know, do we have enough liquidity to pay all our bills? And so that, that tells us if we're saving money, building money.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You're the first lawyer I've talked to that has talked about that. That's, that's interesting. The, the burn rate too. I know some other, like Kevin Chaney, I think he focuses on burn rate too. But you, it's, it's almost like you are operating it kind of like a startup, which is interesting.

[Brian]

You know, it's, it's funny. I'm, I'm at a business that is now 90 years old. 92 years old.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I'm aware.

[Brian]

So, so 2023 is our hundredth anniversary. We're taking suggestions for what type of big ass party we should have.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So how. Okay, so and I do, I, I do have that in the notes about being a 90 year old law firm. And like that's one of your proudest moments is like getting it into the 21st century. Not moments, but accomplishments. Like how is it 90 years old? Like what is the. Who owned it before your father in law.

[Brian]

All right, so my stepfather in law, just to be clear.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, steps.

[Brian]

Okay.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Stepfather. Stepfather in law.

[Brian]

Yeah. So my, my, my wife's stepfather. So was his father originally. So yes. His name is Abraham. Okay, so Abraham founded the firm Abraham and Ruth.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Very biblical fun fact. My dad wanted to name me Abraham and my mom said no freaking way.

[Brian]

So you ended up with Tyson?

[Tyson Mutrix]

I ended up with.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Ross Tyson. Yes.

[Brian]

Okay.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Drastically different names.

[Brian]

So Abraham founded the firm in 1933. So we, we do a, I did a behind the scenes at Disney years ago when I was in a, in a non lawyer marketing group. And I suggest anybody, if you do it, you go down to Disney and maybe we'll do it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I've heard it's amazing. It's a great idea.

[Brian]

Unbelievable. Really is an amazing thing. And they talked about traditions and they really pump up new people about the traditions of the. And so it really got me thinking and I do a traditions presentation and I try to do it live for all of our onboarding. And I have the original casebook from 1933 and.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You're kidding.

[Brian]

The handwriting is Ruth Markov, who died in 1985. Because I have stuff from her all the way into the 80s and there's a really cool connection. So they founded this firm back in the 30s and by the 50s they were doing really, really well. I think they even at one point they had a PI component. They had a bunch of stuff. The building I started practicing in, 401 Broadway, just south of Canal Street. They had an opportunity in the 50s to buy the building. That was a lot of money back then, like $25,000.

[Tyson Mutrix]

What's it now?

[Brian]

Let's just say I probably wouldn't be sitting here.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, yeah, I bet.

[Brian]

Or I would be sitting here talking about different things. And then my father in law got involved and his father passed away fairly young in like 1970. He took over with a bunch of partners. And then by the time I came in the 90s they were really focused just on the workers comp. In fact this is how kind of the life cycle of things. So that's why I like the idea that you said I kind of look at like a startup, right? Because this guy Adzes does this whole thing about the life cycle of businesses. It's a bell curve and they get ossified and they die out and whatever it is. And you're always trying to kind of stay right there in the prime. And by the time I came in they only did workers comp. They were renting to a Social Security attorney who taught me stuff and we had always wanted. And I was like, why don't we do Social Security as well? Why is he renting from us? Because one of the partners got mad that he was taking cases from other like comp attorneys.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh geez. And competition.

[Brian]

They were charging him. It wasn't a lot of money, but comparatively they were charging him so much money he was basically like paying the rent for this office space. Wow, that was so small minded.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Very, very small minded.

[Brian]

Because after, you know, so that partner leaves and my father in law retires and 911 or he retired after 9 11. But 911 happens and we did the smart thing and we moved further downtown. There were a Lot of incentives. But when we moved, this attorney wouldn't move with us. And so that's really when we started getting into the Social Security piece. But coming back to what you're asking is all these years I kind of came in, I got this amazing education as a young attorney. Real behind the scenes stuff from my father in law. Really, really behind the scenes stuff. So I knew a lot more by the time I was 30 than most guys and gals would know before. They're like 40, 45 in terms of how the business is run and working your way up through it. And then in 2007, I moved. We were downtown. I was like, I have four young kids. Like, what am I doing? And quick story was I had a friend who had a building up in White Plains and I just subleased my space, moved up to White Plains. The next year was the crash. Thank God I had a sublease and I was out of there and the rest is history. But it was at that point that I started getting involved in really marketing, trying to get more cases and beginning to look at this as a business and what it's like. So I try to treat it like it's a, it's a startup and get into that more mature level because, you know, you don't want to grow too fast, but you don't want to grow too small. I've been through it, I've grown fast. Where, oh my God, we're doing so well. I was throwing money everywhere and then like the next year my accountant says this and this. I'm like, what's going on? You know, I'm paying my father in law off and I wasn't taking a salary. Wow. Stuff like that, you know, stuff like that over the years and, and I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. So that's definitely by about 2010, we were like, okay, what's going on here? Let's. But there's a lot of good DNA and we're still dealing with what I call a lot of kind of mutated bad DNA.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Like what?

[Brian]

Just little ways things. People think sometimes in terms of how they handle things. Even though we have certain processes in place. I have a lot of employees that have been with us a long time. So they, you know, learned from the old, the old team.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Well, okay, so this is a good segue into like circling back into hiring and people and stuff. How you're not the only attorney that I've talked to that is, that's trying to get the firm out of the stone Ages. Into the new ages. And that's going to be really tough. So how do you deal with that? And how do you get in the right people into the firm with. And then melding with the old people without having them have the bad habits?

[Brian]

Well, I think one of the most difficult things is realizing when you have to say goodbye and actually say goodbye to a really important, key, old school player. So my office manager until 2013, I thought. I remember September 7, 2013.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, that's stuck. It's imprinted. Where's it tattooed on you?

[Brian]

She, at that point, was with the firm almost 30 years.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Whoa.

[Brian]

And she actually taught me a lot. And she was phenomenal. Wonderful person. Cares and cared so deeply. But I'd come back from an event, be like, okay, we're gonna go do this. And I would go, absolutely. And then she'd turn around and do whatever the hell she wanted to do. And it took a while for me to, you know, realize that's what was holding me back. You know, I was like, why isn't this working? You know? You know, and trying all this stuff?

[Tyson Mutrix]

I think she was like that. Why do you think she would sound like she was like a cheerleader but then not do it?

[Brian]

I think it's, you know, partly, you know, I know more than he does. I don't like that. Afraid of change. And I think the afraid to change piece is the tough part for those folks that have been with you a long time, some people are built to change and modify, and other people, you know, they'll change a little bit, but then snap back to the way they're doing things.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Have you watched or listened to my recent episode about toxic employees?

[Brian]

No, but that is on the list because I.

[Tyson Mutrix]

By the way, the YouTube commenters don't like it. Becca asked me if I. If I wanted to delete them. I'm like, no, I like it. Let's keep them on there. The. But I think it's typically employees that are probably commenting. But I was. Because I was wondering if they. If this particular. If this particular employee has the traits that I talk about. So I am curious if you. Would you go listen if. If it's. If it sounds familiar to you at all. She ever tell you how great she was?

[Brian]

She wasn't quite like that sometimes. There was some of that. I. I do. I have gotten that from some people.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

You know, we've done a lot of the disc assessments in the office.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You love disc. Yeah.

[Brian]

And we trend a certain way and we pull our hair out going, what is it? How are we even attracting people like this? We're just putting a frickin ad out there. How are we. Is it the nature of what we do as a business? Maybe it is. So we're now kind of, we have a potential hire now. And I said to Kathy, I said look, I said we like this one person that works for us. They have their own issues but we like this stuff about them. Let's compare that person to this new person's disc because if it's close enough then we're going to get somebody more like him as opposed to somebody like this other person.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, we do that other assessment. I can't think of the name of it.

[Brian]

The Minnesota, I don't know, whatever the other one is.

[Tyson Mutrix]

It's, it's Jim and I have talked about forever. I always forget, I always have to ask Amy what it is. But we use it. And I was looking at all the common trends. It was funny because we were you talking about like what you're attracting. We had not been analyzing it from like okay, like what do they have in common? Like for these different positions? We just hadn't been doing that like when it comes to like the numbers. But then I wouldn't looked at it like wow, these are all matching up. All the ones that were good hires were in this category. All the ones that were bad hires were in this cat. It was like wow. So you really can break it down and like oh wow, this, this will work for us or this won't work for us.

[Brian]

Yeah. One thing we're trying now is we've, we've made some job scorecards and we're, and we're actually building some assessments of what we think is the right employee for that job role. And then we're going to take the potential new hires disk and compare it to that one.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, I like that idea.

[Brian]

And the other thing is to use them to compare like okay, you know, even if this person is whatever C and S they're going to be working with this person. Let's see how they actually interact. You know what the interaction is going to be like because we need them working with this person.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Do you use the job scorecards in the interview process?

[Brian]

We try to, yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Usually when we, not usually when we do bring it up, we talk about it. They, the candidates seem to like it because they know what their expectations are. Yeah, and that's, that's really, that's, that part's really helpful. You also know like okay, like what do we want this person to do? Like you Actually think it through.

[Brian]

Well, that, that's the thing is you can't just say, oh, well, we know what they're going to do. Oh, we know what a. Well, no, you don't. I always have this fight with a friend of mine where he always complains about this one employee who comes in late and I'm like, have you told them they need to be here? They should know.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Then you can't complain about it.

[Brian]

I said, well, they should know, but they don't. So why don't you tell them? Right. You know, if you spell out and then it. And this is a stress reliever right now, when a person's giving you a hard time or you're having a hard time with the person, you can say, let's sit down. These are the five things you agreed to. You're killing, killing it on numbers 1, 3, and 4. What's going on with 2 and 5?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Absolutely.

[Brian]

And, and it makes the process of trying to help them improve, if you do want to keep them on, so much better. It's like, okay, around this thing. What's the one thing we're going to do.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

To this month to work on this thing.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a ton of benefits to it. It's especially true with, like, this probably doesn't apply to you with, with your firm, but there are. If someone is coming in late, it, it might be because I'll call the, the old regime, you know, where maybe there was other leadership in the firm that's like, they were okay with you coming in at 9:00 when, when your expectations are 8:30. So they may not know.

[Brian]

And it's also behavior. Right. Our behavior. What we tolerate and don't tolerate. You know, you hear people say, oh, if you tolerate the crap, then the A players get upset. Forgetting the labels. If you're tolerating certain things, all the other kids know it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

Period. I have four kids. You know, they can play my wife and I like a fiddle. And so can your employees. Right. They just know. They see what's going on.

[Tyson Mutrix]

When it comes to like changing gears from kind of like the old guard to the new garden where you made that, that switch where you kind of get your financial house in order and all that. Was there some triggering factor that said we've got to do this now? Like, was there some big event that happened that made you make that decision?

[Brian]

So I brought my leadership team to Denver, Colorado in 2018 for a scaling up summit. Verne Harnishes Scaling Up.

[Tyson Mutrix]

You and I both love scaling up.

[Brian]

Love scaling up. It's the one I picked. I'll just say that there's so many methods and systems out there. Just pick one and go deep. And prior to that, we rented a workspace, and they had these great big glass whiteboard walls, and we had had a phenomenal year the year prior, and we were drowning in 2018, and we sat down and we worked with our business coach and tried to really map out what the hell was going on. Who should we let go? Who should we keep? What are we really doing? What are the numbers we're trying to look at? My friend Mike had just now begun getting involved with us and more and more of this stuff. And I remember mapping this all out, and we came back and we made some tough decisions, and some tough decisions were made for us, and we turned things around, and that was really the pivot point, because it was the team together. It was the first time that my. My leadership team together, and there were five of us had really made some decisions, talked it out like adults.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And then, you know, we followed it up with the summit for the scaling up, which kind of just ties stuff together. It's, like, really cool. And that was really. That was really the pivot point that I. That I can think back on, because that leadership team is still there, and they have grown and matured so much since that time. In fact, one of the individuals had said to me, she goes, remember, you know, the wall? He said, I know we. We made certain decisions, and I'm fine with it, but, boy, what if we had done that?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Wow.

[Brian]

And I had. I said to her, I said, well, you know, you. I go, you don't boast often, but you're 100, right?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

That was a very interesting. What?

[Tyson Mutrix]

The wall.

[Brian]

The wall. There are a lot of walls in my life.

[Tyson Mutrix]

But, you know, that is. That is interesting, though. Like, but it. I mean, it was definitely impact. She had an impact on her. Have you ever heard me talking about. I don't know if I've mentioned on the podcast about how Amy and I went through this exercise where we said, if we were going to reduce the firm down to this number, like, who would we pick? Have I talked about that?

[Brian]

No, I don't call you.

[Tyson Mutrix]

It was a very interesting exercise where we didn't. We were in a position where we had to lay people off, but it was just an interesting thought exercise that I wanted to go through where I said, okay, let's say that we wanted. Because I was looking. I Want to say, okay, I think what started this is I wanted to increase our profit percentage is what I was wanting to do. And I was trying to figure out what are ways we can do it. And I was like, well, what if we did this exercise? We. We actually did it at a date night.

[Brian]

Well, I was like, oh, you're a hot date.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Exactly. So and I said, well, what if we picked? And I don't remember the number, but it was almost like a draft where I said, I'll go first. Or actually I said, you can go first. And then I went. So we went back and forth and we picked, we set the number and we went back and forth and we saw what was left over and we're like, oh, interesting. It was very insightful.

[Brian]

So I like the language you just used because one of my favorite little things to use and we don't use it enough is basically a salary cap. We create a little salary cap.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Oh, interesting.

[Brian]

Right. So, hey, look, here's. Here's the max. Here's. You know, the way we did was like, hey, here's the max revenue and here's expenses, and here's this. And what's left over is salary.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And. And it's very helpful because I would challenge you not just to do it on the negative side. I spoken to my CFO about this because we've finally gotten our little teams together and we're figuring out profitability and breakevens and stuff is go the other way. I say to myself, what would it be like if the minimum salary in my firm was $100,000? What if the file clerks getting $100,000. Right. If you. Let's blue sky it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

What would we need to generate to get our 20% profitability?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Sure.

[Brian]

And whatever. And the only thing you're doing is you're just forget whether it's realistic or not. For the moment, you can look in and say, oh my God, if we weren't going to get rid of anybody and we loved everybody we had. In order for me to get to that point, this is the number we would need.

[Tyson Mutrix]

That is. So that's another thought exercise. Now I have to go through or.

[Brian]

Think about is like, well, we'll still reduce people, but let's say we're not going to reduce salary. We're doubling everybody's salary. Right. You know, you do certain things. I mean, at some point people will get used to a number. But again, if you have specific expectations. Precision. A friend of ours always talks about precision. Right. Then you can really get to A point where you can do that. You can say, huh, what does this look like if I'm doing it, you know, this way? Why?

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah. What I like about this too, is a lot of times I'll hear people, you know, sitting in this chair or maybe like, in one of the masterminds, where, like, someone talks about the revenue that they want to bring in, but they've not really thought about, okay, how many cases do they actually have to settle? Or how many new estate plans do they have, the packages do they actually have to do to get to that? And I think if they were to do that, they might realize that number is not really reasonable, or my number is way too low and I need to be thinking about it at a much higher number. I.

[Brian]

One of the things we try to break down for team is when we give them a new revenue number, try to break it down, say, you know, compared to what you did, that's only $12,000 more a week.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And that's it.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

You know, you know, you say to them, oh, $240,000. Like, oh, my God, how am I gonna do that? Oh, you know, it's $8,000 a week. It's not a big deal.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Another fun one is just to look at your revenues. And then, because I, I, I, I just don't care about revenue. I don't. Revenue doesn't matter. Profit matters is really what matters. But going and looking at the, with, okay, what can you do to increase that profit by a certain amount and, like, see where your bloat is? Because you gotta, like, think about how many areas of bloat there are, and you start to look at everything, look at all your financial documents and think, oh, I could. My profit could go by, up by this, this many more. Hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars.

[Brian]

One of the things I work with with the CFO is they have their formula for basically a third, A third, a third type.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

Maybe 40% in the business we're in, but they break out the profitability side as owner's comp and profit. Right. Because we put a lot of things for our business that come out of the business but are really straight to us.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right? Yeah.

[Brian]

But you need to account for that to know how well you really are doing. Trust me. You have, what, three kids? Yeah, three.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Three kids.

[Brian]

Yeah. So my four kids are still on my cell phone plan, so there'll be.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Chips in a few years, so I don't have to worry about the phone.

[Brian]

Yeah, I'll be paying for that. So, but, but you know, it's important. That's, it's a phenomenal exercise because it is about profitability. It's like, oh, do we want to just increase revenue 10% or what if revenue only goes up 5% but we increase profit by 20%.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

You know, do we really need this or that or, you know, we're talking, how do we get that hundred thousand dollar base salary out there? Well, this is what we would really need. In fact, one of the things that we did with the acquisition was we did a break even analysis and said, okay, once we reach this number plus 15%, then we were going to do a profit share as kind of part of the plan. But the 15% was, I was building in the profit that I want for the firm.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

And I'm more than happy to share the pennies, the dollars after that number. But if we don't reach out number, I don't want to be sharing.

[Tyson Mutrix]

No.

[Brian]

You know, in something. And I've made that mistake in the past.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So I think we've all made that mistake of, of overpaying or miss paying where you're paying. Yeah, miss pay. I made that up. I don't, definitely don't think that's a word. But where you're, you are, it's all with good intentions. Where your bonus structure is incorrect, your, your commissions are incorrect. You're, you're just giving away, you're giving away money is what your ends up end up doing.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Tyson Mutrix]

So yeah, you got, so this is a, this is an exclusive. The kids get to come in. You'll come in and sit down if you want. The, the. So we brought the kids with us and yeah, to this one, they, they actually get to watch us do the interview at the end of the, at the end of the show. So this is, this is fun. This is fun for me because we wanted to bring them out, let them kind of see what daddy does with these shows. Which is, which is kind of fun.

[Brian]

They're good shows. Even though, you know, you don't do a family podcast to you. Oh, he's podcasting again.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Exactly. You know. Yeah. This is a perfect time to. All the compliments you gave early on is. That was a perfect time in front of my kids. Just about how great the episodes have been.

[Brian]

Oh my God, the episodes have been phenomenal. Especially the ones where you talk about the kids.

[Tyson Mutrix]

That's exactly, exactly Right. So if you were to think about the next five years for the disability guys. Yep. What word would you use for what your plans Are for the disability guys. One word.

[Brian]

It's three words.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay, give me one. You can give me the three, but.

[Brian]

I'll give it to you as a acronym. Bpg.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay.

[Brian]

Beneficial, profitable growth.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay.

[Brian]

That is our driving strategy. We are going to have profitable growth. We're going to have growth. It's going to be profitable, but it has to be beneficial. And that is benefiting the community, benefiting ourselves, benefiting what we, you know, what we do and who we do things for. Because there's a lot of ways to make money, but there's some ways that are not as nice as others. Just internally, you know, we used to represent uninsured employers for years.

[Tyson Mutrix]

All right, that sounds awful.

[Brian]

And it was awful because I would say 1 out of 10 were really deserving of good representation because they just screwed up. The other nine were horrible. Like, I hated it. And I said, you know what? It's not worth the money. Even though it was cash up front, it's not worth the money. And that's. It has to be beneficial to what we do in terms of helping people. So the disability guys, we are the choice for all disability and injury legal needs. And that's our focus.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Do you ever have any intentions to make it a national firm?

[Brian]

Yes.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Okay, tell me more about that.

[Brian]

You know, we're trying to figure out the model. At first the model was maybe some type of franchise model, but really it's going to be more of probably a regional growth and then a national growth. I do have a vision in five years to be sponsoring at least a sports team somewhere. We are leaning heavily towards Paralympics and some disability related because we are the disability guys, after all.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Smart idea.

[Brian]

So, brilliant idea. So we're, we're working on that. In fact, I am a golfer, so we're actually getting involved with the Metropolitan Golf association this year for their adaptive golf. But I'm also really into. For some reason, I'm just like obsessed with like parabiking. Yeah. So I have a couple leads in over there and just, you know, it fits with who we are. We love being involved in the community, but, you know, that's a little bit of the ego. But I would, you know, love to go to a stadium or an arena or something. And there the disability guys are sponsoring, you know, the event. And not just because I want my name up there, but I think it's. I can see that as a. A brand.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right, right. I mean, the moment I heard that name, I instantly loved it. It is a catchy name. And then you add the cute Little Ted, you know, on the, you know. Yeah. On. On the logo. And it is memorable. I like it. It. Who came up with Ted?

[Brian]

You know, we had hired a. We had gone through, morphed through some different logos and. And one of them was. It was kind of a cartoon of me with helping with some people. Again, it was so expensive to put it on the shirts. And we hired a company that we liked the work that they did, and they gave us a whole bunch of different things and we actually had people vote on it in the office. And then we ended up with Ted.

[Tyson Mutrix]

I like it. Well, who designed it? I guess so that company that put it together for you. I got you. Yeah. Okay. So the last thing I want to ask you about that we'll wrap is, so you want to get this thing to a national firm. What's the one thing over the next so many years before you get to that point that you need to focus on to make sure that that happens? People say more.

[Brian]

It's really about clarity, alignment and focus. And we're getting our message clear. We're getting people aligned, we're getting our focus there. But you need the people to execute part of my succession planning for the future. I do vision my son coming into the business, depending on what happens with non attorney ownership, affects some stuff as well. But getting the right people that have the energy and the drive to want to make this happen. I vision myself as the board, you know, the chairman of the board. Right. Coming in, chill, meeting with them. What do. What do you guys. It's interesting, right? You hear a lot and you've spoken about on your podcast before about, oh, you have to be a CEO acting. Nobody knows what a CEO is or how to act like it or whatever it might be in terms of how we're educated.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

And one thing that's missing from all that is one of the CEO's jobs. Aside from being the face of the company and driving the strategy, making sure things and resources are in places, they're also the liaison with the board of directors. We don't have a board of directors 100%.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

So I see myself as being part of a board of directors for this enterprise. And I can see my son, I can see some other people there and coming in, making sure they get what they need or pushing them a bit more and doing it a lot sooner than what it took me to.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Does this mean that PI is in the future for the firm?

[Brian]

It is not off the table? I definitely. And in the right way too. It's like I've been around enough really intelligent and smart and successful people talking about your dad and others, and I can absolutely see that as a piece of the puzzle. Especially if, you know, I like the idea of a niche focused and then, you know, referring a lot out.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Right.

[Brian]

Just as a general business.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah.

[Brian]

You know, it is kind of nice.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Yeah, that, that part is, is the firms that do that, it's a, it's a. I think it's a cool concept. I think it's, I think it's kind of hard. I wouldn't say it's hard to pull off. It's just a, it's not something.

[Brian]

It takes a different skill set than.

[Tyson Mutrix]

Running a 100 practice. All right, Brian. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. I loved having you as the last guest. I told you that before. Just because, like, you have, you bring an energy to it. It's just kind of. It was a great ending on this note, so I really appreciate it.

[Brian]

Awesome. Thank you. This spring, we're taking the Maximum Lawyer Mastermind to Maui. The perfect setting to reset, refocus and recharge. April is a pivotal time to assess your law firm's progress and fine tune your strategies to ensure 2025 is a year of unparalleled growth. Our Maui Mastermind is designed to help you identify opportunities, overcome challenges, and take bold steps forward. This today event blends high impact business training with transformative hot seats. On day one, you'll gain insights and tools to propel your firm's success. While day two is dedicated to Mastermind hot seats, where you'll receive personalized advice and strategies tailored to your goals. Goals. You'll leave Maui with a clear, actionable plan and the confidence to implement it immediately. Don't miss this opportunity to Mastermind with us in paradise on April 10th and 11th. To learn more about this event and grab your ticket, head to maxlawevents.com.