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This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Welcome back to maximuller Live. I'm Tyson Mutrix and today we're going to be talking about a quote that I read last week and I. It's been kind of stuck in my brain so I wanted to just kind of talk through it. It's from Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. Just it's. And if you've not read that book, it sounds like a book that, oh my gosh. That. Why would you want, why would you want to read that? It, it's actually a really impactful book. I highly recommend it. 33 laws of war, also just a fantastic book. Highly recommend that as well. Both just if anything gives you an idea as to how some people act the way that they do. Okay. It can also be used for manipulation. And I'm not saying that you should use it for manipulation. I'm just telling you it could be used for that. Which is why it's actually really important that you read it because you can see why some people try certain tactics. That's why I like the book influence. The big. The book influence is like that too because, and I read that in undergrad, I remember having to read it and not being happy about it because a professor gave it to us and said you gotta read this over the weekend. And I was like, well, there goes my weekend. But I'm really glad I did because such a good book, really good book. And it helped me understand why marketers do certain things. And that way you're not getting manipulated when it comes to marketing. So another good book. But that's why I like these books. But the, when it comes to this particular quote, it's, it's really, it's not anything to do with manipulation. I think this is more. This more has to do with the founder, the law firm owner. And this is, I think, why it Kind of struck me. So here is the line from it. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous. So do not build fortresses to build to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous. So. And it really kind of got me thinking about myself and about other law promoters and it got me thinking a lot about how the mastermind that we just got back from in Phoenix when, which was just really was incredible, and it got me thinking about solos themselves and how being solo can be very vulnerable for a variety of reasons. And also you got me thinking about like solos that succeed versus solos that have not succeeded and why. And so we're, we're going to kind of talk about all of that stuff. But the first thing, I've kind of divided this in diff into different topics. And so the first one is really the, the fortress illusion is what I'll call it because Robert Green in his book and his books are really well, research. These are not things that he. Like, that's why they're like, they're thick. They're super thick. And they're like full size text and full size. Like the books are full size. They're not your typical, you know, five and a half by nine and a half. They're like a full size book. It's like a textbook really. They're really long thought out. And he warns against isolation because leaders that really kind of retreat into these fortresses, they lose access to information and influence. That's. Those are the big reasons why you shouldn't do it. And if you look at like historically, I, I love that he gives like historical lessons. So historically, rulers who isolated themselves often fell because they became disconnected from reality. Right. And if you think about this from a law firm perspective, think about when you. And this, this applies to many of the people that have scaled to this point. This is a lesson for those of you that have not gotten to this point is that you at certain points will scale to a certain point where you have become disconnected from people on the front lines. And it is a. When, when that happens, it's very uncomfortable because you become disconnected from reality. Okay. So. And that is a very uncomfortable thing. And it's, it's an uncomfortable thing that you're going to have to sort of get over. But through enough feedback loops, through a strong leadership team, you can, you can easily overcome that by. You have to find ways of being in touch with the front lines so that you don't become disconnected from reality. That's the reality. So that doesn't mean you need to jump back into Things that does not mean what that, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying you need to have enough information flowing up to you so that you don't become too disconnected. So, but then I started thinking. So a lot of these are questions I've written down for myself that I've been thinking about. And so like this thing like, why do successful people, why do they sometimes build these fortresses without realizing it? And there's a quote in the book, isolation is dangerous. When you cut yourself off from others, you cut yourself off from information. And I think the reason why, there's lots of things, and I've thought about my own, my own, you know, career and running of the firm. I think we do it because it's going to give us freedom. So we're thinking, okay, I'll stop taking calls, I'll control my calendar like a hawk. I'll do all these different things. And what it does, it ends up creating these fortresses of isolation. In reality, you're cutting yourself off from the outside world. So we do it with the best of intentions, but we, we have to realize that there, we still have to, to do that networking. Okay, strategically, by the way, not just willy nilly. We have to, we still have to create those feedback loops where we're getting information all the way up to the top. We're hiring the right people so that they're not filtering information from you that you should be hearing. We gotta make sure we're having dashboards and the data that we need. So there's all these things that we still need to, to do so that we're not disconnected. So it's great to have great control over your calendar. It's great to not to do things like unscheduled phone calls, not doing unscheduled phone calls, office hours, all these things. All these things are still good. But that also means it's even more important that you have the other things like the dashboards and the data and the feedback loops. Really important. And so there's another question I was thinking about where. All right, what does the modern fortress look like for law firm owners? Meaning remote workers. Right. Whenever a lot of firms are remote. I don't think that the majority of firms are remote at this point, but there are many, many firms that are remote at this point. What does it mean for AI? I can't answer the question for AI. I don't know what it means when it comes to that. I don't think anybody has that answer. I think that that's the right answer is that we don't know. But when it comes to remote, I mean, I think that that's an easier one because you, you have people that are in their homes working by themselves and they're really cut off. They have no physical contact with people. I mean, that's the reality. So we have to find ways of creating that connection with our team when we are so dispersed. I mean that's something that we have. That's an, that's an issue that we have because we are hybrid. We've got the two physical offices, but we also have many remote employees too. So it's, it's a, it's a tough thing. So you have to find ways of connecting. We have an associate, he actually spent, spends part of his time in Phoenix and part of his time in St. Louis. So he, he splits time between two and so oddly enough, we hung out when we got back. I, I had court on Monday and we hung out on Monday in St. Louis, but we were both just in Phoenix and didn't hang out at all. But we had to find times to do that. So we were, we were able to find times to hang out. And we weren't just hanging out, we were working and all that. But we were, you know, I was able to be face to face with them. And so the more you can find those opportunities, you should take them. You really should. I mean, so other ways that like just generally in the modern workforce, I mean how we sort of create these fortresses, like being the only decision maker on things, that's a form of creating this, this fortress around yourself. Avoiding going to like conferences and sort of training these masterminds, even like where you go and you spend time with other law firm owners or doesn't have to be law firm owners. Maybe you go to a management conference because you're, you're getting information from the outside world. Okay, I know you can get a lot of this, I know you can get a lot of this from like Chad GPT and all that, but you can't tell me. You cannot tell me. I can just tell you from the, just a, this isn't like a self promotional thing. Don't, please don't take it as that. It doesn't matter which what mastermind it would have been at. But like you can't tell me if that, if you were in the, in the mastermind last week that you would have gotten more value from asking all those questions from ChatGPT. You wouldn't have. It was an amazing group and just the discussion was incredible. That would. You can't replicate that inside of ChatGPT or Claude or you name it, you just can't. So that human connection, really, really important. So avoiding those outside groups, those people that have gone through had similar experiences. But before you go, you know, standing on the shoulders of giants that think about that quote, that's kind of what you're doing. Like you're going. And even if the person is not a quote, unquote giant, you are. You're still standing on the shoulders of someone that has been through it. And you can, you can actually increase the speed of your learning by standing on their shoulders. Another thing we do, we create these isolation chambers where we refuse to delegate. All right? Where we are just like this whole person doing things, that's another, it's another big issue. And then another one like believing no one understands your issues, your problems, and so you just kind of keep them to yourself. That's another way of creating these isolation chambers. I think I like the, I like the idea of an isolation chamber more than anything because that to me is more of like the. There's no information coming in, there's no information going out, because I think that's more of what we do. So the. There. Oh, you know what? This is another thing I wrote down. There was a, A study from Harvard Business School that I talked about, I think a year or two ago on the episode, on the show. And it had to do about isolation and entrepreneurship and all that. And I talked about CEOs and it, the study was about how CEOs, it found that they often experience power distance where the higher that they rise in leadership that in the. Or, it wasn't about CEOs in general, it was about people in the companies that, the higher that they rise in power, the. And they called it power distance. So the higher they rise, the fewer people give them honest feedback. And that is a really, really big problem that creates a massive informational blind spot. So it was a really interesting study. And so you think, oh, the higher I go up in a company, the more information we get. It's actually the opposite. So be very, very conscious of that. Even if you're in a small firm, that means that if you're, I mean, you're always at the top, okay. And if you have people under, like directly underneath you, they're probably not being super honest with you just because probably out of fear. So you have to find ways of getting this information and you have to sometimes get a little creative. Right? So I, I do Wonder. This is more of a question for, like, people listening and people watching. Like, I wonder if you've ever noticed that the lonelier become the more reactive you become too, because that's sort of a thing I've noticed is that the lonelier that the owner becomes, the more reactive they become in their decision making. I see it in masterminds all the time, and I see it on people that I have on the show where it seems like they isolate themselves and they become very reactive. Almost paranoid, as another way of putting it. So I do wonder if anyone else is experienced that. So if you. If you have, let me know, because I. It's at least something I've observed. And I. I just wonder if it's just in the isolated. Using the word isolation so much in the isolated experiences that I've had with law firm owners and masterminds. But I do wonder if. If other people are saying that. So I got. And it's something I kind of want to pass on is like solo thinking. Like, there's nothing wrong with being a solo, by the way, but I think like solo thinking, it's almost like silo thinking, and it leads to slower learning. And the firms that tend to grow the fastest are the ones that have the ideas that circulate. You look at Kevin Chaney's firm, it seems like a firm that, I mean, it's been growing rapidly, but also it seems like they have in that firm, the information is passing through on a regular basis and it's cycling and cycling and cycling and seem like it's a very healthy from. Because of that. So I. It's just something kind of thinking about. So I would. If there's anything I kind of pass on. This, this part of this episode is like, just kind of thinking about, like, where in your life or your firm, you accidentally built a fortress and see if there's a way that you can maybe keep all the positives and get rid of the negatives by maybe increasing information flow. I think that's a big part of it. All right, so the, the next part of this conversation is about networks, right? And the advantage of networks. And we've already talked about this a little bit, so I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot. But just. And this is back to kind of Robert Green. Like, if you think about throughout history, leaders with strong networks have consistently outperformed those isolated networks, those people, those leaders that don't have those. Those people to reach out to. It is a just a matter of fact that that is true. And so you can actually create a lot of leverage by having networks built out. So it's almost like information is a, is a currency for success. Where, and I'm not, I'm not talking about just information within your phone. I'm talking about really information between, in the different networks. And this is where it's the Isaac Newton quote. I actually wrote it down. It's if I've seen further is by standing on the shoulders of giants, size of Isaac. And so this is, that's kind of where it is, where you are sharing this information from network to network and you, allows you to be successful because you are standing on the shoulders of giants. So I'm not going to go a whole lot into this more because I, I think I've already talked about this a little bit. And so just make sure you are not isolating yourself from other networks. Make sure you're continuing, continuing to network with other, other attorneys, other potential referral partners, all that kind of stuff. It's, I think it's really, really important. All right, so the, the, one of the other topics I want to get to is just the psychological cost of all this where if you, if you isolate yourself, it doesn't like. And we've talked a lot about information, but isolation doesn't just affect like information from flow. It really, I think it does really have a effect on mental health and decision quality. Okay, so those two are related, but they're different because we talk a lot. We, we have talked a lot about mental health, especially over the last six years. I guess now mental health has been a big deal, but what we don't talk enough about is like how it affects the, the decision quality, quality. So the quality of our decision making really, really cost leaders. It's without a doubt leaders without trusted peer peers, they experience higher stress and poor strategic judgment, meaning that they're making terrible decisions. Okay. And I think a lot of that has to do with, and I don't, I don't have anything to back this up. This part I'm just kind of, it's something I have thought about. I think it's because we just ruminate over and over and over again about negative stuff. And, and so we're just kind of cycling in our heads and it leads us just to make a really poor decisions on things sometimes. And if we just had that access to outside people where we can run these ideas by people, then it would kind of, kind of get us out of that cycle. And so the more isolated we become, the more we kind of cycle on these negative thoughts, which then leads to negative decision making. And it gets back to what Jason Selk always talks about. I know Jason didn't come up with this, but that's. There's a scientific principle about the more. The more you focus on something, the more it expands. So whether that's negative or that's positive. I was talking to my trainer just this morning. We were talking about this. This a similar topic, and we're talking about Kobe Bryant. And his is. He was talking about putting. He thought he. He likes putting all your eggs in one basket because you can always have. You can always create more eggs. And I. And that had to do with, like, shooting more baskets and all that. And we were. We were kind of talking about, you know, shooting baskets. If. If Kobe had focused on, you know, missing shots all the time, he would miss a lot more shots. But my guess is that Kobe probably focused on making shots. In his mind, it was about making shots, and so. So he made more shots. So if you're making in your head, if you are. We're talking about, like, the decisions in your head and all that. If you're thinking about making negative decisions all the time, you're going to make negative decisions. But if instead you flip it and you're talking, you're. You've convinced yourself you're going to make good decisions. And I talked about last week. I did a training last week about, like, what identity do you adopt? Are you going to adopt the identity of a weak leader that makes poor decisions, or are you gonna adopt the identity a strong leader that is very decisive? Right. Some of these things are lies that we're telling ourselves. But if it's a good lie, that's actually a good thing, because we're sort of convincing ourselves that we are that thing. And you ultimately then become that thing at some point. So whether you are telling yourself it's a negative thing or a positive thing, you're gonna be right either way. Okay. That's just the reality of it. So another question I have for myself and kind of have for years, too, like, why is it that law firm owners, they feel lonely even when they're surrounded by so many employees and maybe a lot of them. And so this is, to me, this is a really interesting thing because a lot of it has to do with us suffering in our own imagination than in reality, where we feel like we're the only ones that can decide on certain things, where we feel like we're the only ones that know certain information. And I also kind of think that we are always, it does seem like lawyers especially are always trying to escape something. So a lot of lawyers went to law school because they, that was like the next step and they didn't really have, they didn't really have a plan. Right? I'm not saying that that's everybody. I'm just saying that's a lot, a lot of lawyers, Lawyers, A lot of times lawyers are trying to escape into the owner's box, quote, unquote, owner's box. Sometimes lawyers are trying to opening separate companies to like, you know, like separate marketing companies. They're doing all these different things. I feel like lawyers are always trying to escape. And I don't, I don't really know the answer to that as to why that is. We can all draw our own conclusions to that. But it does sometimes feel like it is a lonely thing. It's a lonely, lonely thing at the top. Lonely experience at the top is a lonely feeling. Even though we are surrounded by a bunch of employees that are more than willing to help us and then want to be there for us, we. I think we have to lean on that a little bit more. We have to be more willing to lean on our employees because they want to help. Sometimes I think maybe we, we think that we are overworking our employees and putting. To put too, too much on them. But I think also sometimes they want to be there more for us than we know. So we have to be willing to accept that. It's almost like the last step in the go giver about accepting, accepting what people are willing to give. That's a, a lesson that I have. It's. It's taken me the longest to learn. I think is, is being willing to accept what others are willing to give. So. All right, let's. We are getting close to time, so I want to make sure I. Because I have. I have seven or eight topics I actually wanted to talk about with this and clearly you're not going to get through all of it, but maybe the last one I'll talk about is just connection as a strategic asset. I bet you haven't thought about that before. I know that you've thought about it as being a positive, but I wonder if you've actually thought about being a strategic asset because the connection is not just emotional support. You can actually use it as a strategic asset to improve your decision making, your creativity, even your resilience. There are studies on resilience that, that come with being connected to other people. I think that was a really interesting one. But I do think that the most successful entrepreneurs intentionally design these environments where ideas they collide. I do think it happens accidentally sometimes too. I think I've been very lucky when it comes to accidentally designing environments around myself that where I've been benefactor of many of those. But I do think a lot of the most successful entrepreneur entrepreneurs, they intentionally design these environments where they can really thrive. It so really be thinking about how you can create these environments for yourself. You have connection with other people where you, you can use that to your advantage in a way where you can make better strategic decisions. Whether that's marketing, whether it's operations, whether what whatever it may be. You'll have, you know, maybe some collaborative planning sessions. Shared I guess shared learning as, as like so creating some of some environments where you can just, you can, can even do this in your firms where you have like share shared learning when it comes to like AI. Like okay, what are we doing with AI here? How are we doing this? And it could be about different case decisions on different cases. But whatever it may be, it's undisputed that communities outperform individuals collectively. If you took 30 individuals collectively or individually and you compare their outputs to 30 individuals that are working together, the 30 individuals that working together are going to outperform those 30 individuals by a thousand. It's not even going to be close. So. And even if it's a small group, never doubt the power of a small group. Small groups can be very, very powerful too when it comes to connection. But. All right, that is all I have. I'm not gonna. There's other, these other topics that I definitely miss. Maybe I could do another episode at some other time on these. But there's lots a lot of thoughts I had about this. I've been thinking about quite a bit because I, I saw that quote. It was actually one because I, I've read the books but when it comes to. I follow someone on X that posts the 48 laws of power. They different quotes from it and I saw this one and I was like oh, okay. That it got really got me thinking. So I, I probably overthought on this but I was out in Phoenix and I had some time to do it and so I did so but that's all I have this week. Remember to check out Becca's list for the best vendors and ones to avoid. That's really, really important. And if you want more information about our upcoming events, Maxwell events.com or you can do a maximum Lawyer. We've got a YouTube accelerator in June so make sure you check that out. We got Jeff Hampton coming out. We got Ryan Weber coming out. Joey Vitali might stop by with some donuts, he says. So we'll see if we can make that happen. But it's gonna be, it's gonna be a great event. So hopefully we can see all of you out there. But thanks for watching and we will see you all next week.