We provide fractional administrative staffing for law firms. And so we do that on a part time remote basis, whether it's receptionist to paralegals or an executive assistant. And the latest feedback I got from my clients is a lot of times, small firms don't have the systems are the people to implement kind of the office management. And to set up, you know, we need to have a cadence of meetings and I'm just shocked at how many even large firms don't have these things set up.

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. And we've got a great guest today, Emily LaRusch and introduce her in just a minute. I believe this podcast is being released on April 23. And it's just two days before TGR live our live event called growth strategies for law firms happening in Boca Raton. So I apologize if you're live listening to this on like the 27th. And you're like, oh my goodness, I just missed this great conference. But Emily's actually going to be there and be with us. We're looking very much forward to meeting her in person and learning more about her company. But we've got amazing content on artificial intelligence and marketing, best strategies, cutting edge stuff about how to get a million viewers on YouTube and Instagram, law firm culture and law firm management. And the Prophet coach John McCarthy is coming from England. I'm so excited. So by the way, if you if you did miss it, and you're listening to this some sometime in the future, I believe we're going to have some of the recordings online as well. So if we're seeing your teacher alive, I can't wait to meet you. And if this is sometime in the future, then this recording is in the past, my apologies. Anyways, let me get to our guests, because she's one of the coolest people I've met recently, because she's got all kinds of solutions for law firms, and tangled rules. We do internet marketing for law firms. And then there's so many things that the law firms need on the back end that we can help them with, like sometimes they're short staffed, and sometimes they're not great at answering the phone. And sometimes they need a supplementary paralegals and people to work on case. And guess what, Emily's got all of that. So without further ado, Emily, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast.

Thank you. Great to be here.

And tell us a little bit about before back office, Betty's like we always like to hear the backstory for our interesting guests.

I worked a lot in real estate worked for a big law firm, and I'm kind of a nerd. And so it was exciting to me to work on Saudi titles. And just one example of the kind of thing that was thrilling to me is one man had hired a hitman to kill his wife got busted didn't kill her when she needed him off title. And that was my job to try and figure out how we can legally get them off title and I love that kind of stuff.

That's great. And so how did back office Betty start and tell us a little bit about the company? Well,

I knew I wanted to start a business. I kicked off my first one when I was probably five or six years old. I've always been very entrepreneurial, and slaving other children in the neighborhood to work for me. So what were you doing? What

were you doing at five or six?

I would put on shows for the neighborhood like BMX bikes skateboards, and then I would charge parents basically to watch their kids play.

Oh my God, that's great. We, I was telling someone the story the other day, my my neighbor and I had two businesses before the age of 10. The first one was lemonade stands down at the tennis court. And the second one was a business called the puppet trio. And we did puppet shows a kid's birthday party. So we actually had a bank account like it was a real business. Wow,

that's cool. How fun. So we're

both entrepreneurial. And then I got stuck being a marketing executive for many years. And then I got freed up to be an entrepreneur again. So but this is not about me. This is about you. So what how to back off is Betty start.

So I always knew I would like to own a business. I knew I was entrepreneurial. But I actually was kind of a failure in school. I fit. I always say fourth grade was so nice. I did it twice. I didn't know what I was good at. I didn't know what if I could go to college and actually succeed at anything. And so you know, one day I was working In a bank, a little bit miserable, working in the mortgage department, and I realized, you know what, I know customer service, and I was calling around to different people for home services. And the service was horrible. And I said, well, any idiot can do that. Well, I'm any idiot. So how about I make that my business because that's something I know, I'm not an engineer, not a marketer, but I sure know how to deliver great service. And so that was kind of the genesis of starting the business.

That's fantastic. So your specialty is law firms? And what are some of the services that law firms can get from back office Betty's,

we provide fractional administrative staffing for law firms. And so we do that on a part time remote basis, whether it's receptionist to paralegals or an executive assistant. And the latest feedback I got from my clients is, a lot of times, small firms don't have the systems or the people to implement kind of the office management. And to set up, you know, we need to have a cadence of meetings. And I'm just shocked at how many even large firms don't have these days set up. And we don't have a structure, we don't have an agenda. So based on the feedback I got from my clients, we're rolling out fractional firm administrators. And these will be trained to help implement the systems into the organization, even if it's a very small firm. Oh,

that's fantastic. And give me a couple of the, you know, real case studies of folks that you get a call and you know, things are are breaking down, and you put folks in and solve these problems.

One of my biggest hot mess stories is woman she had his take over her calendaring and getting the consults scheduled. She was kind of in a small town in Texas. And so everyone in town comes to her it seems like she was the only attorney in town it's times by took a look at her calendar, and the woman didn't have time to eat. She didn't even have time to use the restroom. She was just slamming her calendar. So we helped her by building in breaks throughout the day, we set parameters within the calendar, so you could not book more than a certain number of consults or client needs. Things in the day helped her to create structure, sanity balance. And then another one, one of my favorite clients, Tim, he started off with one virtual assistant. And he's up to about 10 paralegals now on his team, and he's been able to expand his firm nationwide. So it's really exciting. And it seems like every other month, he's adding another part time paralegal.

Oh, that's great. So he's growing and you're filling the need. I mentioned I was super excited when I met Emily. Because I think two of our clients right at that time, were going through a need for some supplemental support. So one of our clients in Texas, I guess somebody quit, and she was like, the intake manager. And she took a bunch of the intake calls. And I think they had another vacancy. So it was like, Oh, my goodness, you know, this is perfect. I gotta connect my guys with Emily. And I forget the other one. I think they were just down a couple of attorneys. So, Emily, I hopefully hopefully you got it and help those guys out. I don't know, if those talks. You know, what's a good example of the roles people play, like I've heard of, you know, a lot of people are going nearshore over shore. And they're actually supplying attorneys, you know, graduate attorneys, who, you know, technically can't practice law in the United States, and can't pass their state bar, but they do legal work and their actual graduate attorneys, or, you know, you all have very experienced paralegals. What's generally the need case and what how does it work out? What's the best fit?

Oh, you don't? I think it's it's specific to the firm what their interests are. Can you find great people overseas? Sure. I tried to hire someone, an accountant, a CPA. And just because of the language and the barriers, I wasn't able to successfully work with them, and actually cost me more money. And so I've gone ahead and done all we do a high, your percent US base as vendors and as far as our business goes, we're 100% US based. So there's some great options out there that are offshore. I personally just have tried many times and not had success. And for that reason, we've decided we're going to maintain a US base. Our paralegals are boots on the ground. They've worked in law firms in the US and typically we're matching you know, if they're a litigation paralegal, we're matching them with a lit firm. So they have specific experience to the firms that they're working with.

Fantastic. And what are some of the things I should be looking for? Like, if someone says I've got this in this problem? What's the best solution for back office Betty's?

Um, I really like to look at kind of holistically with look at the whole picture of where are you spending your time? Where is your genius zone? What are you amazing at who's spending time in the firm on things that are outside of their genius zone. And then let's go ahead and augment those areas that because when you're working in your genius zone, I know you're an EOS fancy, you know, the 10x principle that when you're working on the things that light you up, you can 10x your position, you can 10x the results you produce for the firm, you can produce, produce, you know, 10x and growth. And when we're spending time in areas that we're not good. That's one of the things, too, one of the things I'll say, I see all the time. And I have to, you know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell attorneys all the time, when they're telling me I want someone who is super friendly, can do intakes, and they're going to make the clients real happy. And then I also want the pair of them to be a paralegal and I want them to be diligent, they've got to dot the i's cross the T's do the work. And I have to bring it to him. I'm sorry, but you're talking about two different people. As you know, when you have a sales slide prepping docs for you. That doesn't make sense. And so one of the things I like about fractional is you can have it all, you can do a fractional intake person who is really friendly and going to read the relationship with the client. And then you can have a part time paralegal who's going to sit down nose to the grindstone, and guess what, they're both going to be more efficient and less time because they're working in their gene VSOs. And that's kind of how our business is structured. I also employ that same within my own business. So I eat my own dog food. And I like to keep specialty people in their niche doing what they're great at.

That's great. And how do you do you use any psychological testing? Like we're big predictive index fans here? 10 golden rules? How do you decide decide which type of person is which type of person

haha, the arch rival for addictive index. So the arch rivals, their competitors, predictive index and culture index are very similar. And culture index implementer as well, huge fan of it, I've been using it for years. It's one of our secret sauces. And it's a great management tool, but also killer for recruiting, and making sure that we get the right people in the right seats. And so as you know, some of the things both tools will measure are, you know, are we logic? Are we emotional? Based on how we make our decisions? Are we process oriented people oriented? Do we have a high attention to detail because we need that in our paralegals, not so much in a salesperson. And so it's really important to make sure, like we're profiling and creating the right roles, and then managing. So I'll tell you what I saw today, Jay, I met with an entrepreneur who's struggling, and we ran his profile, and he has an entrepreneurial profile, he is a problem solving visionary solutions guy. And his job behavior showed me that he doesn't trust anyone in his company to delegate to because he's flipped on his job behaviors from who he really is. And I asked him, how stressed Are you and he said, My wife is trying to calm me down frequently, and it's not working. We we've got to get someone in here who can manage the details and who can execute and that you can trust. So these are ways that we can use it as a management tool as well highly recommend, get one of these within your company, it's gonna change your life.

So, you know, you told me a little bit about this, I want to learn more, the certified culture index, your certified implementer. And it's a survey that helps you identify your genius zone, tell me about the culture index and how you use it and where it's best applied.

So typically, we start off with a executive team diagnostic. And I'll use this example just for simplicity. But let's say we have a franchise owner and he owns five stores, he has one that's performing really, really well. And then he's got the worst one, we can run a diagnostic on both of these divisions. And we can see what kind of people are in each seat for that company. So we look at the org chart that's really high performing. And then we can look at the other one. And chances are they don't have the right profiles in the right seats. And so we'll run an executive team diagnostic or diagnostic for the law firm and make sure that we've got all the support people in the right seats. Even with the attorneys, some attorneys are going to be a little bit more the face of the company a little bit more high on the social and others are going to be you know, it's a different profile for a research attorney than a litigation attorney, as you know, and so we want to make sure we're really getting the right people in the right role so that they're successful and it helps the firm overall.

That's fantastic. And you mentioned you mentioned us and and I guess what I want to differentiate it And you were talking about the entrepreneur earlier, and that he needed someone to really manage the details. And in Eos, they call it the visionary, and the integrator. And the classic visionary which I was voted on by by my company, because you get voted into your roles, you don't keep your job. When you do POS, unfortunately, I was voted in as the visionary. And what we're doing today is very typical visionary work, you know, I networked and I was introduced to Emily. And then I booked a networking meeting with Emily. And then I said, Oh, my goodness, we've got a superstar here. And I was able to connect her to a couple of clients. And here we are doing our company's marketing, we, you know, and it's something that I love. And hopefully, it's in my genius zone. And if you're listening to this, you probably agree that I get great guests and enjoy doing it. And that's part of the visionaries role. You know, the visionary is also probably the big salesperson and doing the, the high end deals and relationships, and building relationships for the company, and the visionary for the company, the future of the company. And then the integrator hates doing all those things, you know, maybe they can do some of them. But for the most part, they you know, it's like, oh, yeah, go to the COC, get the 10 new ideas, and then bring them back to me, don't try and do all 10 of them in the company. But I'm gonna get, you know, one or two of them done that, solve problems we have in the company. And then I'm gonna save the other eight for our next quarterly planning meeting. So the, you know, it's a classic, like CEO, CEO, oh, Chief Operating Officer blend. And EOS obviously has some very great teaching and guidance for those roles. So I guess my question is, does the certified culture index survey help you identify visionaries and integrators? And I'd love to know your take on EOS and EOS for the law firm as well.

Yeah, so 100%. And when people ask me, you know, how did how did you get where you are? My first secret is culture index, and my second is EOS. And so I can give you an example of a law firm owner I just talked to she's having a contentious relationship with her partner, there are three partners in the firm. She is very visionary. She's very strategic. She has huge ideas for growing the firm, he is very much a tactician, he's stuck in the ways he doesn't like change. His profile is wonderful for doing the work of an attorney. But as far as a partner goes, he's holding the firm back from growth. And now the second partner is more of an integrator, he's very much aligned with the visionary. And so really being able to put ELLs and culture index together here, we were able to identify, we've got a visionary, we've got an integrator. And then we've got a guy who should really stay focused on on focusing on doing His work, because he's amazing at that. And so when we kind of figure out that structure, and we also learned that while she deals in feelings, I feel like this is a great idea, the partner who doesn't like change deals and facts and data, so she needs to come to him with the facts, data and logic behind the decisions to get the partner on board. And then as far as EOS goes, your integrator makes it happen. And I've met with law firm owners who are not visionaries. And that's okay. It's this is where I love culture index. It's not about you having to be this entrepreneurial profile, you started your firm, there's a good chance that you may not be an entrepreneurial profile, and that's okay. What we can do is bring in someone who is a futuristic, proactive thinker, wonderful with strategy and pair them with the attorney. He's probably really good at the execution piece of it. And so we still get a visionary integrator pairing, no matter where you are as the law firm owner.

Fantastic. You know, Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. If you want to learn more about it for law firms, we have an entire one of these webinars and podcasts. And we had some real rock stars on that. Gerardo, who's our implementer, who's amazing, from the profit recipe was on our, our webinar, and Mike Morris, who has a $200 million law firm in Michigan, and he credits like 90% of it to EOS because Gino Wickman, the author of traction and all the EOS books and the creator of Eos was Mike was one of his first clients. So he's like the EOS case study Rockstar for law firms. And he also has a business called fireproof where they help law firms integrate EOS. So, if you want to learn more about that, definitely watch that. But, you know, tell me about EOS. First of all, how it works for your firm. And then we'll talk a little bit about EOS for law firms.

Wonderful. So we are EOS purists. So we run our L 10. meetings we use 90s The tool that use. And I tell everyone I talked to whether they use EOS or not get on 90. It's the most incredible tool to make sure you're having efficient meetings, and you're actually solving issues permanently and forever. I attended a meeting recently where they were trying to self implement EOS. They were not capturing issues. They were all over the place in the meeting. And so I was like, what, what? Well, we have to stop right there, because we're talking about one issue. And then we start talking about solutions and why it got that way. And now we're talking about something else. What we need to do on EOS is we capture the issue, we discuss it, we solve it, we create our to dues, and then the 90 system. I think blossom is another one a tool that you can use. It tracks all those to dues. So when I meet with you next week, I'm gonna say, Jay, I've got this list of things you committed to do and they're due today, have you done them? Yes or no? And if no, we're going to talk about that. And so it's a really great management tool as well. So Eos, I get so excited about it, because it absolutely changed my life. It was took me from working 40 hours a week down to about 15.

That's crazy and crazy. Good. Yeah, one of the nice things about EOS. By the way, if you're thinking about checking, you know, I always tell my visionary buddies that the book, everybody gives you the book traction and all you gotta read traction, best seller traction. But this book is called Get a grip. And get a grip is told in a parable format. And it's a case study. And it's actually written for the visionary. So if you're, if you're like me, and I was explaining before, if you're like, the person who goes out to the trade shows and speaks on behalf of the company, and does the big sales and, you know, partnership type of deals for your company, you've got you want to read the book, get a grip. And then if you're more like the detail person, the person who runs the back office and the super organized, read the book traction. But I guess my question is, talk about us for law firms and why it works so well for law firms?

Well, it's really simple to understand, I mean, you go to law school, you become a lawyer, they don't teach you how to run a business. EOS teaches you how to run the business, it creates the structure for you. I mean, it's really easy to understand, once you've got it implemented, your firm is just running so smoothly. Everyone's held accountable. Everyone knows what's expected. You know, just from personal experience, since we flipped to Eos, we have achieved 99% of our quarterly goals for two years in a row. And prior to that it was almost never and so it just really gives you that structure and simplicity to follow to make sure that your form is successful, and takes all of the hard work of trying to figure out how to run a business off of your plate.

I do have a theory on this. So I'm good case in point as someone just sends me, you know, I've got this employee and they're, they're kind of missing details. Sometimes they hit it, sometimes they don't, they're kind of making mistakes, how do I coach or train them? And this is such a simplistic answer. But if you were to run a culture index on those two firms, and in that particular scenario, what we'd probably find is we've got someone who is not the right person in the right seat, we've got someone who doesn't have a high attention to detail. And just simplistically running it through a profile like that will tell us right away. And so my guess is they probably have a great salesperson. Second to that would be your processes in place. But I'm gonna go with number one, if you have the right people, they're going to create the right processes. And so I think, you know, Good to Great, they say right people right seats, but the missing ingredient is like, we're trying to deduce who the right person is we're trying to do it on intuition. And so if we can use some facts and data in a system, like share index, or even predictive index, you just run the people through the firm, and it takes the guesswork out of it. Because I went to a company last week, and they are all a players all high flying, and there's one person who's being terminated, the eight players will eat those B and C players for lunch. And so when you get everyone operating like that, they're creating the systems and process, they're not going to be satisfied with mediocre conversions. You know, I think that's what you need. Is that in line with what your theory is? Yeah,

you know, there's a lot of parts to it. But you know, you're right, like, an RPR s right person, right seat is EOS? Well, I guess it's not originally in the US term. But it's something that there's a whole exercise that you go through on a regular basis to make sure you've got the right person rights ease, we actually just did the exercise. And we've got a couple employees who are absolute rock stars. And, you know, everybody voted them across the board on the seven different criteria that you use to determine if someone's right person right seat. And by the way, are they a culture fit with your firm? And so, you know, if, in more cases than not, if you've got the right person in the right seat, you know, they're the right person for the job, then they fit with your culture. And so you're gonna be winning across the board. But, I mean, I guess my theory is, you know, it's also relies on leadership and, and then probably, you know, like a lot of firms that fail, you know, typically firms have two partners. So a lot of firms are like Berkowitz and LaRouche, or Lucien Berkowitz, and, you know, in a lot of cases, LaRouche is wants to be the boss, and Berkowitz wants to be the boss, but they haven't gotten through the exercise of, of Eos, or any other great management formula to figure out who should be doing what, dividing the jobs, getting it right, getting the right person to do which job and, and then, you know, hiring is obviously critical. I mean, it's, it sounds so obvious, but so many people make mistakes and don't have the right people the right team. So yeah, maybe that is. But like I said, I'm just wondering, this, I'm owning this theory, sometimes it takes me years for these crazy theories,

when it comes to partners, like cannot stress enough that you guys have got to know your swim lanes, and then stay there. Because it's your right, it's that stepping on each other's toes, trying to micromanage, get involved in each other's business. I've seen it happen time. And again, when you're in your swim lanes, and you're both excelling. Everything's great.

That's awesome. So what are a couple of tips for firms? You know, maybe the smaller firms that are growing a couple of tips that you've seen, because because you and I have this unique scenario where we get to look from the outside and law firms. What are some tips made for some of those younger lawyers to help them fast forward their success?

All right, I'll go through them rapid fire. So number one, I love a branded firm like the divorce lawyers, you know, or something like that. rather than you know Berkowitz and licorice, I love it when you clearly articulate what you do. I love a boutique firm. If you can imagine yourself out shopping and you're looking for a divorce lawyer, are you going to hire Jay Berkowitz? The guy who serves anyone and everybody in town? Or are you going to go with the divorce law firm? P It speaks to people. And so I'm a huge believer in niching your company, the riches are in the niches and it doesn't mean you can't take on other things as they pop up. I think that's a huge fear, those things will still trickle in, I promise you because I still get calls from chiropractors now and again, and I'm like, clearly everything I'm talking about is for lawyers. So niching is really important. And then the culture, the branding are things that I'm a big pusher on, I've had people come into my company, and they can identify immediately that they're not going to be a culture fit. They know it just feels off to them. And so having a really strong culture is super important.

And EOS gives you an exercise. And we've now been through it, where we defined our, our vision and our values. And the last two are the last hire, I interviewed the candidates, I interviewed the final two candidates that the team had suggested. And I went through the culture and values with them. And it was awesome. You know, and and hopefully, hopefully, they weren't lying to me when they said it was a real fit. So and I'll get better at that. So I have a few quick, short snappers that I always do. We've done for years and these podcasts and and you can go back and ask Gary Vaynerchuk this question and Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora and Tony say, the founder of Zappos, God rest his soul. So better you're on a famous list here. So what are some of your personal tips, or apps or software that you use for personal productivity? Because I can tell you get a lot done.

Okay, so confession time, I have a little lecture ADHD. So for me, in order to stay on top of things, I use the Reminders app on my iPhone, every single day, I go in each morning, I look at my calendar, sometimes I look at the wrong time. And this is where I get messed up is I set the reminder for the wrong time. But for the most part, this is what keeps me going. I am doing so much constantly, it keeps me on track. The next thing is I keep a notebook, also on my phone, and I write down ideas and notes as they're coming up. And that way, I have one central kind of repository of where to go to collect all of my thoughts. So even if I'm writing it in a paper book, I'll come back, toss it in my notebook and keep it there. So those are my two favorites. That's

great. And what are some of your best business books and ask this, you know, maybe for the young female entrepreneur who wants to be Emily LaRusch one day soon.

Okay, so you kind of stole my thunder with all the EOS books, so I'm going to skip those. I'm gonna go into Mike McCalla wits Profit First, I think it's a really good model. And one of the key takeaways I got from that is if your business is not profitable, something's broken in your process. The next one, and I will typically not read a book twice, but this one I'm building on almost three times the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. Fantastic book. And every time I read it, I It's like I get a new nugget that I didn't realize from before.

Keep it right here because I've referred to it so often. Emily and I, I invited Emily to my group. That's called the dream 100 The law firm dream 100 Secret enclave, so I can't tell anyone else about it. But the concept of the dream 100 Chet Holmes Ultimate Sales Machine is that you figure out, you know, who are 100 or 300 of your best prospects, and you don't try and target the 500,000 law firms in Florida. And literally, there are like 500,000 people who pass the bar in Florida, but you try and figure out the 50 or 150, there'll be a great fit for you, and so much easier for your sales team. And that's just one of the great concepts in the Ultimate Sales Machine. How about digital, like, any blogs, podcasts, webinars, you know, when it comes into your stream, you open it up right away or you listen to that podcast every week.

So one of my favorites is an oldie but how I built this with Guy Roz. They're wonderful founders stories are always inspiring and he tells them in a really entertaining way. Obviously 10 golden rules, great for marketing or marketing is not my forte so I do like to hop on other people's marketing, podcasts and YouTube channels and learn from them. I like Entrepreneur on Fire and then going along with books and podcasts. I've jumped a lot into personal development I do a lecture and I'm and for about business and one of the first things I tell the kids is get your Mental health right now. Because you're going to be told no, it's going to be tough. You're going to have to work with people, and to be strong emotionally and having a good emotional fitness is important. So that's something I focus a ton on personally. So

I think we're almost there. I guess I think the last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

Well, back office, Betty's dot com, as you can see the sign behind me. I'm also Emily LaRusch, on LinkedIn. And you can always email me Emily at back office studies.com.

And one last question, because I forgot to ask you Where did the name come from?

Okay, so this one came as I was sitting on my couch, dreaming of own a business, watching the Kardashians. So embarrassing. And I knew I wanted a memorable name. I wasn't even sure what the business was going to be. And this is really embarrassing. But Courtney said, can I say this on here? I'm gonna say it. It's vulgar. I'm no backdoor Betty. So Vulgar makes fun of me all the time. And I always my answer to that is but you remember it, don't you? And so there's my little marketing thing. It sometimes is correlated with a vulgar statement, but people remember it. And that was really my only goal is to have something memorable and not boring, like answering phones for lawyers.

Well, congratulations, Emily, you built a great business. And you speak very concisely and simply about it and you explain your ideas. So well. So thank you for being here. And thanks for being a part of this. And I look forward to meeting you in person at tgr live April 25 and 26th in Boca Raton. Yeah, wait,

y'all should come.

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com. That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com.