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Tyson Mutrix
This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Welcome back to another episode of Maximum Lawyer, Saturday Edition. And today I'm going to be talking to you about a really fascinating concept that is inspired by a recent episode that I was listening to with Chris Williamson. And it was a mathematical rule that really caught my attention, and it's never multiplied by zero. And I'm going to talk to you about how that's how that applies to law firms specifically in a little bit. And it's a really interesting thing. And I, I thought about this a lot. And I've, I've got a lot of different ways I think we can apply this. And I'm going to talk about the four different ways specifically how this might apply law firms. Before I do that, though, I do want to ask you for a favor. If you will just shoot me a text. I would love to hear from you. It's always great hearing from everybody when it comes to, you know, the things you want to hear, the things that you like about the different shows, the things you don't like about the different shows. I actually don't get many of that, thank goodness. If I was getting a lot of those, I think I would be a little bit disappointed. But hey, if there's something you don't like about one of the episodes, I want to hear that as well. But text me. I would love to hear from you. It's always fun to hear from you. 314-501-9260. Just save it to your phone. 314-501-9260. Save it. And anytime you're thinking about something, when it comes to, you know, how to do this or maybe you should do that, or, you know, I have a question about, you know, marketing when it comes to Google AdWords, whatever it may be, I would love to hear from you. And if I can't answer it, I'll bring on a guest that is an expert that knows what the heck they're talking about to answer the question. I would love to hear from you. All right, so let's get into this, this mathematical rule of never multiplying by zero. So here's the concept, right? So in math, any number multiplied by zero equals zero. So it doesn't matter if you're, you know, if it's, you know, 15 times 32 times a million times 85, once you say multiplied times zero, the answer is zero. So how does that apply to a law firm? Well, let's say that you have a stellar team, you have a solid client base you have the best technology around, but there's one critical area of the firm where you're dropping the ball. That's your zero. It can negate all of the other hard work that you're doing. And this is, this is what's got my head spinning about this, because I. You can do all these other things amazingly well. You could do an amazing job on the, on the case, but you screw up something else. Maybe it's the client communication, maybe it's something else. And you're at zero, right? The client has you at zero and you're getting a one star review. That is why this is important. And it really does. It emphasizes. What I like about this rule is it emphasizes the importance of avoiding the pitfalls rather than solely focusing on amplifying all of our successes, which is something that I would say is almost encouraged when it comes to lawyers, where you beat your chest a lot, which that's something that I'm firmly against. It is so fascinating to me how much as lawyers, we're taught to really pound our chest and say how great we are, when in reality, clients care about what is important to them, not what's important to you or how amazing you are. They want to know what you're going to do for them. But when it comes to this episode, I, I do want to talk really about avoiding the pitfalls rather than amplifying those successes. So today, what we're going to do is we're going to focus on the four key zeros. And there's going to be more, obviously. But I want to, I want to focus on four that you really need to be wary of. And it comes down to these four. And I'm going to go into more detail. Financial mismanagement, client neglect, toxic work environment, and then also lack of strategic planning. So let's, let's dig into each one of these. The first one, financial mismanagement. Ignoring your firm's finances is. It's like ignoring a ticking time bomb that's sitting in the corner of your office. You know, so we could be talking about, you know, poor budgeting or not, not budgeting at all. Unchecked expenses, ignoring your bookkeeper, ignoring your accountant. Or the big one, here's the really big one that a lot of you are doing. I'm gonna say it. And you know it's true. You're sucking all the money out of your firm. And so you're, you're really cutting yourself off the knees because you can't, you can't grow and you're always Wondering, well, why can't I grow? It's because you're sucking all the money out of the firm and you're, you're, you're. Your firm cannot grow because you're taking all the money out of it. You're going and you're buying that big house before you probably should. You're buying that boat, you're buying that I'll pick myself. You're buying that airplane. You know, you're, you're doing things. You're spending too much money as opposed to keeping the money in the firm and not having any financial controls in place. You're not having anything like, like profit first in place. Where, yeah, profit first talks about paying yourself first, but it also talks about setting aside money for other things. And that's what's really, really important. So you want to make sure that you have some sort of. Whether it's profit first or something else to avoid this pitfall. You need to really have a robust accounting system of some sort. Or even. You know what? I wouldn't even say robust. You need to have whatever works for you, even if that's the most simplified version of some accounting system. That way you can have a process, a system for managing your money. Also, you need to make sure you're doing financial reviews. You need to make sure you're meeting with your bookkeeper, meeting with your accountant on a regular basis, utilize budgeting tools, and then, you know, consider meeting with a financial advisor or maybe meeting with your accountant and financial advisor together. That way they can help you plan for the future when it comes to your money. Also, make sure you have transparency with the rest of your team when it comes to. And you don't have to share all your numbers, but sharing if you're, if you're in a spot. And I've talked to a lot of law firm owners where they're just financially in a really tough spot and their employees are asking for raises and there's no money for it. You have to sometimes make really tough decisions. And having that transparency with your team can, can help quite a bit because they'll have a better picture as to what's going on. And you want to do it in a way where you're not freaking out your firm, but you want to do it in a way where they understand, listen, I'm not in a spot to really give you more money. And if I do that, if I make that, that's just another mistake that is going to accelerate the firm heading in the wrong direction, which to the point where it could really become catastrophic. All right, let's get to the next one. And it's client neglect. And this is one where, you know, you might be, you're maybe, you know, sitting on, you know, top of the world because you're, you're getting all these clients, they're coming in, you're making a bunch of money, you're bringing them in left and right. But what you're not doing is you're not providing that excellent client service that you should be and that those people are expecting because you've listened to us and you have raised your rates. You're getting paid all the money you should be getting paid, but you're ignoring maybe the most important part and that's taking care of the clients. The next thing you know, what you do is you're, you're earning yourself a bad reputation because you're not communicating with your clients. You're not a community. You're not communicating effectively. Maybe you're communicating a bunch, but you're not giving them the right information or you're not giving them the information that they really need to hear. Maybe you're missing deadlines, maybe you're not calling clients back whenever you say you're going to call them back. You're not meeting their expectations. Right? That's what it really comes down to. And in the, in the world that we live in currently, they're going to go online, they're going to not only give you a bad review, or maybe, you know what, maybe it's even worse. Maybe they don't give you that one star review, but they're going on Reddit and they're posting about you and all of their little groups and they're on Facebook posting about you and all their little groups and you don't even know about it. That's the worst part. If you, if they give you a one star review, hey, you know about it. But if you don't know about it, you can't fix it. And that's the real problem. Or maybe they're going to all their social circles, they're going to the barbecues and saying, you know that attorney that I hired for my, for my criminal case? Awful. You know, just a terrible, terrible job. That's what you're, that's what you're working. That's what, that's what you're working up against. And you really got to be able to find a way to not zero out with when it comes to client neglect, because you got to remember, like, client, client satisfaction. It's really it's, it's paramount. You have to implement client feedback systems. You have to be checking in on your, on, on your clients. You make sure your people are checking in on your, on your clients. And you have to ensure consistent communication. I'll tell you about a mistake. I don't know if it's a mistake, but something that we did early on that got us just, I don't know, client setting. It was setting the wrong expectation where we were. Our client contact at the very beginning of the case was so frequent, it was, it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They were hit with text messages and phone calls and emails and regular. So the first two weeks were just jam packed and then it was just much more, you know, every few weeks or once a month. And it was, it was something where it was such a stark contrast. Clients were like, well, you're not communicating with us as much as you used to. And so you have to be careful about things like that. Where we had to build in other things that, where other touch points where clients were getting more frequent communication with us because we had hit them with so much at the beginning that they were almost expecting that or just. It's almost like taking a cold hand and putting into hot water or hot, a warm hand and putting into cold water, right? The, the extremes are so extreme that it feels worse than what it actually is. And so you have to be careful about things like that. So you have to really train your team. You have to make sure your systems and processes are in place. The communication rhythms are right. You have to train your team to make sure that they're prioritizing those interactions with clients, setting those realistic expectations, and when possible, going that extra mile to make sure that you're exceeding expectations. I mean, happy clients, not only are they going to come back to you, but they're going to refer out or they're going to refer a lot more people to you. So there's a lot of value in taking care of those clients that you have rather than trying to get those, the new clients. And we, and we've, I've talked about that in several other episodes about how much cheaper a current client is compared to a new client. So that, that's, that's an important part of this. All right, so let's move on to the, to the third one. And this is a really deadly one. And it's, it's toxic work environments. The internal issues, like a toxic work environment are they can destroy you. They can destroy your firm. I've talked to several firms where, you know, partnerships where they split up and one partner leaves, takes all the employees and the other one's left with no one. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, the toxicity of the work environment. And sometimes all the toxic employees are leaving, you know, so it's, it's not that it's necessarily that, you know, the, the person that get. Keeps all the employees is the, is the, is the one getting all the good employees. Maybe they're taking all the toxic employees. Maybe, maybe the entire system needs to be thrown out. But it is interesting to hear because you can, you can start to listen to them talk about what started the fractures start. People start picking teams, and it can really tear a team apart. You know, some signs that you might have a toxic. This doesn't mean that you do. There could be other things. Maybe it's pay, but some, some red flags to look out for. Maybe you've got high staff turnover, low morale. And you know this because you're checking in with your people. Okay. If you're checking with your people and you're doing things about it, you're not really have some of these, these symptoms. But if you are or if people just reporting to you randomly, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna know about the high staff turnover because you're always having to hire new people. But low morale, you see, poor teamwork because, you know, Mrs. See, I just want to make up some names. Susie is not wanting to help out, you know, Carolyn with, you know, on projects, things like that. I use those. Those are my aunt's names, so I use. I picked on them. But Susie and Carolyn, they're just not, they're not helping each other out. And that's not a, that's not a great environment. You know, other things you can, you can hear back from clients. If clients are giving you negative feedback about your employees, that's another thing. You know, maybe your team just is not. They're just disengaged. You could tell that they're disgruntled. It's really going to reflect in their work. So you're going to be able to see it in their work sometimes that they're just not doing as good of a job as they used to. So that's, that's another red flag that you got to look out for. So you're going to want to make sure that you are fostering that, that good, positive culture. You're looking out for the toxic employees, which I'm going to do another episode on what to look for in a toxic employee. There are several studies that have been done on this, and I'm going, I'm going to go into that in another episode, so make sure you listen to that one because it's really kind of funny whenever I'm sitting in a Mastermind or I'm talking to someone because they're having personnel issues. I was actually on the phone with a lawyer about two weeks ago. They had some questions about growth and scaling, and they were talking about one employee in particular. And I said, let me guess. And I went through some of the signs of a toxic employee. He's like, oh, my gosh. It was kind of eye opening to them because there are some things you can identify that are pretty easy to identify if they're a toxic employee. And whenever I go through them with you in this other episode, you're like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, so you have to watch out for those because let me, let me tell you, they're talking about you behind your back. They're talking about other employees behind their backs. And it's not good. Get your got to get rid of them pretty quickly because otherwise, next thing you know, your entire team is toxic because they've turned everybody, and that's not a good thing. So you're going to make sure that you're getting rid of the bad eggs quickly as, as quickly as possible. You want to foster that positive culture. You want to encourage that open communication. You want to make sure you're recognizing achievements. You want to make sure you're investing in your, your team's professional development. That's a really important one. So everyone's being trained on a regular basis. You're sending people for trainings if they need it. You're, you're really trying to create those opportunities for growth because if people feel like they're, they've hit their ceiling, well, they're going to go elsewhere. Because if, if you, if they can't find it with you, they're going to find it somewhere else. You got to remember, like, your, your employees, your team, that's your firm's backbone. And so their success is your success. You got to make sure you take care of them. All right, so let's get to the last one. So much for this one being a short episode, right? The, the last one is lack of strategic planning. How much. How many of you sort of puckered up a little bit? Whenever I said lack of strategic planning, meaning you, you've not even thought about it or you've not thought about it in a while. Or you know, you've been thinking about it, but you've not been doing anything about it. Yeah, that's, that's one that it gets a lot of people because, you know, operating without a strategic plan might be the ultimate zero. You know, it's also more of a silent zero that, so you're not thinking about it as much and so you don't, or you just don't see it. You know, it's because you're not doing it. You're not, your team's not doing it, your leadership team's not planning. So you don't see it as much. And so it's a silent zero that is, is zeroing out any success that you might be having in other areas without and without a doubt, without clear goals and a roadmap to achieve your, your, your, you know, your bhags, your vision for the firm. Firm. Your firm is essentially. They're sailing without a compass. That's the easiest way of putting it. You know, without that compass, you're just kind of sailing off into whatever waters without any real direction. You're probably working hard, you might be working hard, I hope you're working hard, but without that direction, you're not moving towards sustainable growth. You're just not. You might be seeing growth, but you have no idea where the hell you're headed. So you need to take some time, develop a strategic plan which includes both, you know, those long term goals, but then those short term goals, those stepping stones, which is what I've been calling them, you got to create those stepping stones in between that get you to that long term vision. So you need to define your firm's mission, their vision, or the vision of the firm, and then the values that you're firm. So your core values, you got to make sure all of those are defined because you've got to give guidance to your firm, your employees, so they know that they know where you're headed. That's a big part of this too. Your firm has to know, your employees have to know where you are headed. It's really, really important. And you want to make sure that you are regularly revisiting the, those we at a minimum will revisit those at every quarterly meeting. It's a really important thing that we do every single time. And I've told my firm we will revisit those every single time. Get your team involved and get let, let them talk about it. That's a fun one for me. Whenever our team gets to introduce, we, you know, we assign different core values to different people and let them talk about them. I think it's a really cool thing and I just love hearing them incorporate stories from clients when, whenever they're talking about core values. It's a really cool thing to do. So make sure you do all that. Make sure you get the core values and the vision and the mission define in the. If you're in the guild, we have a guild vision finder. And that's something that it's a easy way if you're struggling to get to kind of break through that. Going through the vision finders is a really good one. You want to do that, but this is going to provide you with that direction. But it's also going to allow you to make informed decisions along the way, which is a, an overlooked part of it. Having that stuff in place is going to allow you to, you know, allow you to say no whenever you need to say no or say yes whenever you need to say yes. Because either it fits in with the vision or it doesn't fit in the vision. And it's going to allow you to make those really tough calls whenever you need to. It's going to allow you to align, you know, the day to day decision making with your overall objectives of the firm. That is all I've got for you today. I don't want to go too much further into this. You know, I'm already, you know, 20 minutes into this and these are usually shorter episodes. I want to make sure that I cover these, these four, four key zeros that might be hurting your firm. There's, like I said, there's probably others, but I want to make sure I cover those up. But before I wrap things up, just you, you never want to multiply by zero. It's, it's one of those things where just use that concept to look at other parts of your firm to try to identify areas that might be zeroing out your successes. It's, you know, my goal is to get as many of you to, you know, seven figures as possible, right? We want to make as many millionaire law firms as possible. For those of you in seven figures, I'm wanting to get you to eight figures, right? That's, that's what we want to do. And if we can identify these little things, these are easy wins, right? If you can identify some of these zeros throughout your firm, that's going to allow you to, to then accelerate your, your growth even faster. So this is an easy exercise. Go through all of your different systems, all your processes, identify these zeros, eliminate them that way. You can continue to grow. All right, that's all I have for you. Make sure you do. Text me. 314-501-9260. Say that to your phone. Shoot me a text. I would love to hear from you. Until next week, though. Remember that Consistent Action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. Go take action. Go do it. Be consistent. Get your process goals down and go. Go get some success. Because you can do it. I know you can. Go take action. Take.