Chris Dreyer (2:15)

But today, Tyson Mutrick drops a strategy for generating five star Google reviews that's not only brilliant, but it aligns specifically to what he's doing in his firm.

Tyson Mutricks (2:22)

Here's where the magic is. Is Maybe in that situation, Isabelle says, you know what, Chris Christian, that may

Chris Dreyer (2:27)

be the best piece of advice I've ever heard. What is the absolutely brilliant thing that Tyson is doing to get those five star reviews? You'll just have to keep listening to find out. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Today we're talking with Tyson Mutricks from Mutrix Firm, Injury Lawyers and Maximum Lawyer. He shares how to maximize your average fee using bad faith claims. Why Dedicated Kids Cares team is your firm's ultimate financial moat and the exact psychological script to turn happy clients into an unstoppable Google review engine. Now, usually I'm the one asking questions around here, but Tyson flipped the script on me right out of the gate to ask about the one metric I focus on to measure a company's health. Let's get into it.

Tyson Mutricks (3:04)

I'm so curious. What is your, what is your one number that you focus on?

Chris Dreyer (3:07)

It's, it's different for everyone. So some of them, what about for the company though?

Tyson Mutricks (3:12)

For the company bites like do you have like a number for the company?

Chris Dreyer (3:15)

So, so the main one I'm dialed in right now is CAC to LTV ratio. That number.

Tyson Mutricks (3:20)

Okay, very nice.

Chris Dreyer (3:21)

That's like, that's like it. I mean to me that's, that's the health of a company, right? Everyone says the, the cost acquired case and that number is the, is the true leading indicator of if you're going to be profitable or not.

Tyson Mutricks (3:37)

So it's funny for us, I like average fee for our firm. Average fee that because you can look at a lot of things from average fee. If your case, if your number starts to go down, it could be an indication of a lot of different things and you can start to tweak things and look at it. It could be maybe you're settling your cases too, too slowly, maybe you're settling it too quickly. Like you can, you can, it can indicate a lot of different things that you. And so we, we know if we're on track, if that number is, is steadily increasing. Whenever I first started tracking that number we were like 7, 400 a case which is super low. And now we're in by the way. We don't, we don't include like the high end cases. Like so if we said like a case for like seven figures, we're not throwing that into the mix. So it'll skew the numbers big time. So ours is right around 24,000, just under 24,000. So it's, it's increased significantly since I started tracking, I think 2015 or something like that. And it's, it's been like a steady, gradual, gradual growth. That means that.

Chris Dreyer (4:36)

Amazing. That's great.

Tyson Mutricks (4:37)

Every. Yeah, every, every single one of our cases is worth at least a state minimum. Actually, it's way more than that. So if you. That's our average fee. So it's basically triple what the state minimum is. Right. So that's, that's a significant increase. And that's. So I think that. And I also think it's way higher than, than the average firm.

Chris Dreyer (4:55)

What were some of the, the big 8020 things that you did to, to get to that, that case value? How did you identify it was a problem and then kind of like, how did you approach, like increasing it?

Tyson Mutricks (5:07)

It's interesting. How did I identify as a problem? I don't know. That's a question I have actually never been asked. Let me think about it. Back when we actually. It's been over a decade since we've been doing it. I don't know. I think I accidentally started tracking it. I think is probably what it was. It started with that and then I guess 8020 is. We started that. That one's probably an easy one where I'd say when we first started tracking this, we weren't. We were not super great at bad faith. We just weren't. We didn't have a. As a firm, not a. Not a strong understanding as to what bad faith meant when it comes to settlement dollars. And then once we started to shift towards that and the firm. That is one of the hardest things to explain to any lawyer. I think, at least in Missouri, it is. It's kind of like the Nick rally approach because it is such a. It feels almost like a mythical thing that doesn't work because they don't see it happen that much. If you, if you go to like a average volume firm, they're typically not using bad faith as an angle to try to get more money out of the settlements. And when we made that shift, I'd say we probably made that shift right around 2017 is really focusing and hammering on bad faith and working and getting excess. Excess verdicts and excess settlements. So that was probably the 8020, if we're going to look at that. And it's really kind of funny. So we've brought on attorneys that have a lot of experience and they, they came from firms that didn't focus on bad faith. And they come in and they're like, they kind of. It's like deer in headlights. Like, what are you talking about? Bad faith? I remember having a conversation with a guy. I will not tell you what city he's in because it would probably say who it is. But he ran. He was heavy on radio ads, and I had, I had coffee with him and I. We were talking. I was talking to him about bad faith and everything. And he's like. He was like, what do you. What do you mean, bad faith? And I had to explain to him, bad faith. This is a guy that was spending a ton on marketing and had no idea what bad faith is. And if he had understanding of that, he would be able to get a lot more money for clients and it'd be better for the profession, too. Back to what I was talking about with our. With when we brought attorneys, I had the same. I've had the same conversations with attorneys that have had a lot of experience, and they have just never seen it happen before. And the first time they see it happen, they think it's like magic. They're like, oh, my God, like, you settled the case for over the policy. What are you talking about? And I, it drives me crazy whenever I hear attorneys say things like that. Because, like, this is, like, this is what we do. Like, this is the. This is the center of whatever what we are doing. It's. Is when it, on the legal side, is attacking when it comes to bad faith.

Chris Dreyer (7:48)

How do you think about, you know, the attraction side, though? I mean, you know, first of all, your, Your fee, maybe you're like, oh, well, I'll pay 5 or $10,000 for a case, or 5,000, because I'm, you know, I'm 5x on the ratio.

Tyson Mutricks (8:03)

So we actually. Funny, I had this conversation quite often. So our marketing team, it's funny because they're always trying to spend less money and they're like, well, you know, to. To get these cases, we have to spend X number of dollars. And I say our average fee is $24,000. Like, if I can spend. So I would always use like a high number. Say if I can spend $8,000 to get one case and get $24,000 on it, I'm going to do it every single day. So. And there it's. But it's funny, I'm always fighting that because they're always wanting. And I. Here's. It's kind of like the nature of our firm. We're like, we're always trying to like, or do we even need that thing over there? Okay, stop spending money on that thing. So it is, it's part of the culture too where we've kind of got that built in. So I'm, I'm kind of fighting, fighting the culture that I've built a little bit where like we, everyone's like trying to maximize every, every penny. So it's part of that. But it, it is kind of funny how like I think if I were in that department, I would probably be fighting for let's spend more money, let's spend more money. But, but I guess that is, that is interesting. So one of the things I see a lot, and I bet you see this too, where people were. They're making money, right? They're making money making money. The marketing thing that they're doing is working and they're like, well, I got, it's just expensive. I want to shut it down. But are you, are you getting cases from it? Yes. So don't shut it off.

Chris Dreyer (9:28)

I have this, I have this all the time. Will they do a rob peer to pay Paul? Of course one channel is going to be better than another. That doesn't mean shut down the one that's not.

Tyson Mutricks (9:42)

Yes, absolutely.

Chris Dreyer (9:45)

I'm the non attorney. Can you give me the simplified version?

Tyson Mutricks (9:50)

Simplified version is that use of the demand. The insurance company lowballs you. So they have placed their insured at jeopardy of having their personal assets at jeopardy at risk. And so because of that we pit the insured against the insurance company, kind of get them to team up with us. And because of that the insurance company is willing to pay more money than the policy. That's in a nutshell. That's oversimplifying is what it is.

Chris Dreyer (10:16)

I think I heard on a John Morgan's really entertaining. I like listening to him because he's also at this point in his career where he has no filter and has no cares.

Tyson Mutricks (10:25)

And I think he was on the.

Chris Dreyer (10:27)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has no fuck.

Tyson Mutricks (10:28)

He gives no fucks. That's exactly right.

Chris Dreyer (10:31)

So I heard. I think he was on Patrick bet David or the mice first million and he gave that example about hey now you're in bad faith. And, and so I'd always wanted to understand that. But yeah, it's. That's incredible. The example you gave the 8,000. I mean 8,000 to 24 is a 3 to 1 ratio. And from what I've been told in professional services, anything three to one or higher is, is healthy for profit, which is awesome.

Tyson Mutricks (10:57)

Anyone that's not doing that needs to change what they're doing. Pick up Running with the Bull by Nick Rowley and educate them a little bit if they've not already. That'll give them the framework, the general framework and then they can tweak it from there. Like we have the other thing too

Chris Dreyer (11:11)

that you know, during the research that came up, it's like you have this soup to nuts. This concierge level approach to a case right where you are really taking care, I mean from rental cars to, I mean you're really, I think of that Alex Hormozi, you read his 100 million dollar offers. Like what, What's a good offer? Right on the denominator. It says, you know, faster and decreasing effort and sacrifice. I mean you are making this very seamless for them. So talk to our audience about that, the impact it's had on your firm. Like, like that approach.

Tyson Mutricks (11:47)

Yeah. So it's funny, I remember I got the URL complete injurylaw.com. it's still like URL that we use, but that was like sort of the mindset we called it Complete injury law is how we, how we focus on it. And it's, it was even to the point where. And I've had this conversation with other attorneys too and they've thought about doing the same thing where we even thought about getting a fleet of cars that while we are let either the client can't get a rental car or it's, let's say it's a uninsured motors claim they don't have rental coverage, that they can use one of those cars. We ultimately decided not to. It just didn't make sense to do it. But we really take the whole approach where if you can't get to a doctor, we make sure you read to the doctor. And the whole idea is, is that it's going to increase the value of the case and it's obviously about helping our, our clients and everything. But it, most of it centers around getting the clients to the doctors that they need to get to and making sure they make it to their appointments because that affects everything else when it comes to the case. But we, I mean from, from start to finish. I like how you put it soup to nuts. We really do take that approach. We do like little things too where this isn't necessarily related to that specifically. But if a client has someone in their life that dies, like there's a button we can click and they can add a couple notes and it's we. It sends flowers out to them like things like that. Where we really want to take this. I don't know if I like the word holistic approach. But we kind of, like, take this holistic approach that there are all these aspects of a client's life that are affected. We've got this massive sheet. I cannot think of the software we use for this, but it's this massive. Imagine this massive Kanban board where we, like, it's massive to the point where you have to get to each column, you have to zoom in. And we usually do this as a team, so we'll zoom in on it. What we do is we broke down every single stage of the case from the client's perspective. So you're at the scene of the crash. Like, what are you thinking? Like, and we. We break it down by, like, what. Like, what's going through their mind? Okay. Like, what are they feeling? Who are they contacting? Who is it that they actually have contact at that very moment? So all these things, we break it down. Like, each one of those little slivers is broken down into all these different questions that we ask and then answer. And from start to finish. And then we kind of, like, develop, like, okay, what can we do surrounding that? And it's funny, I really haven't talked about a whole lot. I really like talking about this in particular because I think it's such a cool thing. And one of the questions is that what is something that no one else is doing that we could do? And that's one of my favorite questions when it comes to that, because we get to that sliver and we answer that question, and that's where the magic happens, because we've just gone through, all right, who are they in touch with at this point? What are they feeling? What are they thinking? What are their concerns? All these different things. And then, like, okay, whatever, what's everyone else doing? And what can we do that's different? And that you get so many great little nuggets and we're not able to adopt all of them sometimes. Like. Like the idea of the. The us buying a fleet of cars for our clients doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you factor other things, but you get little bitty ideas that make a massive impact.

Chris Dreyer (14:58)

I'll tell you immediately. I think when you tell a story like that anybody that's been in an accident thing puts themselves in their shoes. Like when you just. Were you giving that example? So I was thinking of my. Though I work with attorneys, and I've been through this. Like, when it happens, there's, like, anxiety and it's just a blur. Right?

Tyson Mutricks (15:12)

Sure.

Chris Dreyer (15:13)

And, like, I think that, hey, I need to get in touch with my wife and, and you know, work, right? You're all stressed about work and like, you know, it been nice. Like, hey, do you want us to get a hold of your wife? Do you want us to do this? And it's like because your phone might be messed up or who knows?

Tyson Mutricks (15:31)

Have you ever had surgery before?

Chris Dreyer (15:34)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tyson Mutricks (15:34)

Okay. So then you know how disruptive it is. Like, so I was rear ended a couple years ago and I'd have shoulder surgery from it. And I remember and it's, it's amazing. Like the things that I was thinking in my head that I'd be able to do right. And in reality everyone else knew I was not able because like the people I'm surrounded by are like people in my firm and my, my wife who also works at the firm and they've, they see with all these other clients, you, there's no way in hell you're gonna be. I, I was thinking I was gonna be able to sit in my bed and take depots while I was in my bed, you know, and they're like, you're going to be on freaking pain meds, right? But I remember thinking how helpless it felt because I was in bed for a week, A couple days of that, like where they give you that, that nerve block. I can't even raise my arm, you know, And I could, I mean I couldn't use my computer. It was all these different things. Your life stops in some, in some aspects. And when you don't have a vehicle and you have like, that's why it was like such a big deal for us to make sure we get to, people can get to their jobs, people get to work because let's say you're, you are on the lower end of the income scale, right? Usually those jobs, they're hourly based. If you don't make it, even if you've got a good excuse, guess what? Bye. Bye. You're getting fired. Their lives stop, right? Their lives stop. And so a big part of, was making sure that they could get to the doctor afterwards. Work, like you have to accommodate all these different things. So making appointments for them and figuring all this different stuff out, it's a, it's a massive thing because it just not have that one thing. Not having a vehicle in this country is a massive deal.

Chris Dreyer (17:08)

Your reviews, they name the individuals which speaks to the personal relationship. So they mention Kristen and Bianca. The friendly voice, the, you know, Kristen keeps the chaos in check. I imagine when you ask for the review, like, oh, no, no sweat. Like, I got you.

Tyson Mutricks (17:28)

Well, so the key to this, one of, one of the keys. There's many keys of getting your reviews. Google reviews for anyone that's trying to get them. Like, it's way harder to get a Google review today than it was five years ago. It's just people are, are done with it. People are more likely to probably give a negative review at this point than a positive review. Not necessarily with our firm. I'm just saying generally because like that's. Then it's going to trigger it. They're going to be like, oh, because they're pissed off about something. But one of the keys to it, like one of my favorite tricks is it's something along the lines of because we have. We have what we call the cares team. A part of the whole complete injury law was like the. Is what we call our cares team. And our cares team is, is basically there from the beginning to the end. I say basically because they're not working on the case. The cares team, a part of it is actual leads and converting clients, all that. But it's. It acts as sort of like a customer service department where they check in with them. We wanted that continuity instead of them getting handed off to someone and then never having some sort of continuity because we do have it split up where you have the cares team, you have pre lit and you have litigation. So if you go from a lead to pre lit to lit, I mean you're being basically being passed off to three different teams. Cares team hovers along the entire time and then from start to finish and checks in with the client throughout. So that was a big part of it where they're checking in. So. So the key is where I was kind of teasing the key. Let's, let's use, you know, Krista or for example Krista or Kristen. We have a lot of case outing names in our firm. But yeah, we'll use Kristen. Use Kristen. So let's say Isabel from the cares team, she calls and she's talking to you and she's like, hey, Chris, you know, how are things going? The whole idea is to like see how you're doing, checking in on you. And you're like, you know what? Kristen has done an amazing job. So here's where the magic is. Maybe you in that situation. Isabelle says, you know what, Chris? Kristen would love to hear that. Hear that. And what like one of the things we pride ourselves with is if. Is Google reviews. Google reviews. And if you would just leave her a review on our firm page and I'll send you the link and just mention her name. It. It would mean the world to her thing. Like something like that where it's not. Not. Yeah. It's not Isabella asking for a review for her. It's. You're giving a gift to Kristen is what you're doing. Because you. You are so appreciative of Kristen. You're giving her a gift is what it is. That's the magic in that.

Chris Dreyer (19:45)

I think that may be the best piece of advice I've ever heard because there. I think there's three parts to this. The first part is what I see a lot of attorneys do wrong is they'll ask for a review for the firm. Right. Because I always encourage people to ask for the individual. Then now you're saying the gift component. And hey, leave a review for someone else. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's. That's amazing.

Tyson Mutricks (20:09)

See how it changed the dynamic so much? You. You were. You are. Oh, my God. I would love to do that for her because she's been so great to me. I would like. People like giving gifts like they really do. The. The next. The next hurdle is removing all the friction, right? What's the friction? Having to go on there. Like one. Your daily life is happening, but you also like, gotta. Which link is it? Like, because you especially have multiple offices. Like which one. You make it freaking simple. Here's the link. You know, would love to love for you to say a few kind words about Kristen, blah, blah, blah. You know, like that's. You do it.

Chris Dreyer (20:41)

That cares team, I guess. You know, you use like a case status or a HONA or something to keep them updated. So would they kind of take over more the client service communication compared to the case manager? Like. Like break it down just a little bit more of the differences for me.

Tyson Mutricks (20:57)

Here's the main difference. The CARES team just calls to check in to see how they're doing. That's it. It's pretty simple. It's someone calling you from the firm saying, hey, Chris, I'm just. Listen. I know. Looks like you're. Because they look at the notes too. This was something that was grown internally. That was not my idea. One of the case managers came up with this. They'll put in very specific notes about something the client says. So let's say that again. You're the client and you mentioned that you all went, what. What city are you in right now?

Chris Dreyer (21:28)

I'm in Maran, Illinois, actually. You might know Marion, Illinois.

Tyson Mutricks (21:33)

Okay. I know. I know where Marion is.

Chris Dreyer (21:34)

Okay.

Tyson Mutricks (21:34)

So are you. I Was funny. I was going to use the Bears as an example. Are you a Bears fan?

Chris Dreyer (21:38)

No, no, not a Bears fan. Cardinals and used to be the Rams till they left.

Tyson Mutricks (21:43)

Okay, let's say you're a Cardinals fan. So let's say you, you took the kids. Do you have kids?

Chris Dreyer (21:48)

Yeah, one boy.

Tyson Mutricks (21:50)

Okay. You mentioned that you took your son to the Cardinals game last week to the, against the Mets. Okay. So Isabelle might call you and say, hey Chris, you know, hey, I'm just calling to see how you're doing. Checking in on you. It looks. Oh, how was the, how was the Cardinals game last week? And then you talk about that. It's just, it's a simple call, check in to see how things are going and we have some specific questions that we, that they ask with it. But the whole idea is just to see how, how you doing? Right. How you doing kind of the thing. And it is. So that's the main difference. All of the other like case update communication, all that is done by the case manager. But whenever Isabella calls you and she says, you know, how's the Cardinals game? After that she, she might say, yeah, I mean it looks like the, looks like the insurance company's really being a pain. It looks like they really lowballed you on that last offer, you know, and then she'll kind of get into the other stuff. So she's mixing in some of the case stuff. She's mixing in your personal life. But the actual case updates about the legal side of the case, those all that comes from the actual team that the client is assigned to. It's not done by the CARES team itself.

Chris Dreyer (22:54)

That's incredible. Talk to me too about, you know, you know, somebody wants to get involved with Maximum Lawyer. Like community.

Tyson Mutricks (23:01)

Sure. I mean, yeah, it's the ease the easiest and cheapest way the freeway. We do have a big Facebook group. Then you go to Maximum Lawyer on Facebook and do that. That, that's the easies. We also have the podcast so you can listen to the podcast, see if it's kind of your flavor and then Maximiliano, that's, that's where you can go to if, if anyone's interested in any events. Maxwell events.com we have the conference coming up in October so any.

Chris Dreyer (23:26)

Our audience wants to connect. Just a final, you know, how can they get in touch?

Tyson Mutricks (23:30)

Yeah, I think you just go to Maximilian.com if you have questions about the firm, just go to call our office. Don't email me. I'm not a. Not an email fan. 888-550-4026. You can call us if you have anything about a case, but when it comes to Maximilian, just Maximiliano.com Amazing Tyson.

Chris Dreyer (23:46)

Thanks for coming on the show.

Tyson Mutricks (23:47)

Thanks Chris. Really appreciate it.

Chris Dreyer (23:49)

Tyson strategy is the perfect loop. You fight for the maximum fee by mastering bad faith. You protect the client operationally by building a cares team that genuinely maps out the disruption in their lives. And then you turn the operational excellence into a marketing asset by generating those five star reviews. That is how you build an undeniable moat around your personal injury firm. If you found value in Tyson's playbook today, you should take this episode and share it with people in your own office, your intake staff, your case managers and your partners. If you're ready to dominate your market, increase your average fee and sign the kinds of high value cases that let you completely outspend the competition, head on over to Rankings IO. We are the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. I'm Chris Dreyer. We'll catch you next time.

Tyson Mutricks (24:35)

Foreign.

Podcast Host/Announcer (24:41)

Is this October in Atlanta and Early Bird tickets are live right now. If you've ever wondered what we actually cover at this event, it's nearly everything that goes into the business of running a law firm. Because at this level, it's about putting all the pieces together the right way. If you've got a vision for your firm that's bigger or just better, better systems, more organized, more profitable, or more self sufficient, this is the room that helps you make those shifts and build momentum in the right direction. Go to maxlockcon.com and grab your ticket today.