If I were to break down a firm into five components, and it's not just a law firm, really, it's any organization. I use that construction model and that analogy and say culture is your foundation, your org chart, or I prefer a functional accountability chart. Is your blueprint, your people and processes, or your infrastructure, the framing of the of the house, of the building. Then your leadership development and your meeting rhythm is your maintenance. And then planning, as you talked about it, strategic planning is your home improvement, how you get better, how you how you take the house and make it better and better every year.

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, you Well,

at least at any one time, some some close to me might say eight or 10, but yeah,

I'm saying no, but Bill is almost always the CEO, acting CEO of a law firm or COO and he's doing a couple entrepreneurial things, and first I'm going to ask you about one of them in a minute, but talk a little bit about your role as culture officer with firms.

So I actually held that title with pawn lahaki, one of my favorite firms. You know, they're a huge firm in workers comp, social security disability in Pennsylvania, probably the largest, and located in Philadelphia. They also have a massive referral network at any one time, over about 10,000 cases that are coming in. So they're on the cutting edge of a lot of things. I got to know Sam pond and Tom Giordano really well. Sean lahaki, Jerry lahaki, just great, great guys. And we had talked about me coming on board as the CEO or COO, really, Sean was it was destined to be the CEO, but at the time, I was the CEO at another firm, and just felt like that was where I needed to be. And so I started doing some consulting for them. And then he said, Well, yeah, you're doing consulting, but we're going to give you an official title, so we're going to call you Chief team and culture officer. So for about a year and a half, it was really consulting and building their team, developing their leadership structure and organizational structure and culture. But I loved it, and just had a wonderful time with those guys, including tell us about

your time the company was doing branding for athletes and NFL players and Heisman Trophy winners.

for him. And what is the master plan?

So the Master Plan was an idea I had. Well, I've had it for a long time, but it came to fruition. The planning stages came to fruition last year. We actually just had the event in Austin. It's really, you know, a different approach to conferences and to law firm work, I saw it look great conferences in the industry, so many really, really good conferences. But one thing I noticed for years and years being the COO the CEO of firms, is they go, they get great ideas. Typically it's just the owner, the partners, maybe a couple of the execs. They get these great ideas, they learn best practices, they go back to their firm, and they never implement them. Usually, that's because they don't get any traction. No pun intended with the book. But they they don't have the right people at the event they it gets lost in translation. They don't get the buy in they need when they take the idea back to the firm. So the idea of Master Plan was this to say, instead of firms spending their money, which it's a fair amount of money, even just to take one or two people to a conference, I said, What if we put 15 firms in a room? Capped it at 15, they paid one price, and it was a high price. I mean, we we charged each firm $15,000 to be there, but we said you can bring as many people as you want. And in fact, we're encouraging you to bring the decision makers, bring the people that you need in order to make decisions so that we can actually give you best practices, and then workshop time. And best practices and workshop time, though, that you can actually do implementation right there. So there's no Well, we come back. We forgot exactly what Bill said. We forgot exactly what went on. Oh, we're getting pushed back from this person. I joined forces with John knock Hazel, which so many people know, he's one of the best in the industry. And I said, Look, we are going to we're going to give you best practices in every area of your firm over three days, take it, hear it, then workshop it, and make those decisions right then and there. And that was the master plan. And we've gotten really amazing reports back, and I'm pretty sure there's going to be a master plan to point out.

And Master Plan has is that associated with the mastermind that you announced last week at the conference?

great. Well, there's a amazing power of masterminding. We have a whole webinar on masterminds. So if you haven't, you know really understood how valuable and powerful they are. Again, 10 golden rules YouTube channel, look for the mastermind webinar. I want

to encourage everybody to go and check that out. Jay runs an excellent mastermind and they are a key point of growth, just as. Strategic planning is great. Well

enough setup. I mean, you guys are probably dying to hear Bill's good stuff. So I'll turn the slides over to you sir.

Well, thanks, Jay. Let me share here. Is everybody seeing my slides? Yep. Okay. So I, you know, I, I'm going to, I'm going to go through some of these slides quickly. I might even bypass some, and that's for time's sake. I always want to give people more. And by the way, anyone who wants to reach out, biggs.william@gmail.com biggs.william@gmail.com and I will send you anything I've got. So any slides, anything that I allude to, it's all yours. You can have it so law firm management, one of the things that I believe in, and I didn't even realize what you were going to be talking about, Jay in terms of planning, but I am so convinced of the necessity of design in firms, and that's what you were talking about, right, that that the best firms, they approach their business with a strategy, and they have a plan. They it's a law firm by design, and that is an absolute difference maker. So I talk a lot about that, and today for a few minutes, as I talk about management and leadership, that is a part of the design of a great firm. And so many firms, so many entrepreneurs don't understand and don't engage in the science and the art of leadership and management, and their firms suffer. They find inefficiencies, low performance and inability to scale. There's just so many problems that come along with not stepping back and saying it's not just about the practice of law. It's about the practice of law in the context of running a business, of running an organization. And so to me, it has to be by design. So I use this often. It's kind of a funny thing. A lot of people have seen it, but most law firm owners believe that they have designed a firm that looks like this, right? The Taj Mahal is just they are so proud of what they've done and of what they've done. Of course, we could all understand why, right? We want to believe that what we've done is beautiful, sadly, what most of our teams and our clients know better than we do, because they don't have the blinders on. They're not biased as we are about the things that we create. Nobody wants to call their own baby ugly. But what our teams and sadly, our clients often know is that that's what our law firms often look like, a hodgepodge of added pieces and and departments, and we slap something on here, when there's a problem, and then two years later, that's created an even bigger problem. It's not by design. And I was just at a great firm, NRS Injury Law in Cleveland, and their leadership team, their attorneys, we talked about this very thing, about why is it that so many law firms develop this way. Any you know, it's dangerous. There's bad communication. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing. It's because of a lack of design. So the significance here is that leadership and management is a part of design. It is, it is a part of a well designed firm. So what I like to say, you know, management, in my opinion, is really not about people. Management is about processes. I believe strongly that processes are managed, people are LED. And no, no person says, hey, I want to be managed. But processes and systems are managed, people are LED. So I talk a lot about leadership and leading and what that ultimately looks like. As you've already said, at the end of the day, you're not going to reach your highest potential. You're not going to be elite unless you have a plan. I believe that most great leaders in a law firm setting, at least what in the Eos model, you'd call a visionary. I don't know that everybody, you know, every entrepreneur perfectly falls into and even at EOS talks about that. There's different types of visionaries, but I think a role that's needed, and it's typically going to be at that executive, probably at that CEO or owner leader, I'm sorry, owner level is someone that has the ability to be both an architect and a coach. The architect who is designing that's the vision, right? They see what they want. They see what ahead of them. They know how to design it. But then there also is a coaching element, and a lot of people would would call that management. I prefer to call it coaching, but it's the same concept that so many of us use about managing a law firm, but really what that is about to me, managing is controlling and and facilitating, choosing and setting up the right infrastructure and processes the systems and then coaching is leading. People into how to best use those tools, to best use those systems, to best use those processes to get the desired end. If I were to break down a firm into five components, and it's not just a law firm, really, it's any organization, I use that construction model and that analogy and say, culture is your foundation, your org chart, or I prefer a functional accountability chart is your blueprint, your people and processes or your infrastructure, the framing of the of the house of the building. Then your leadership development and your meeting rhythm is your maintenance. And then planning, as you talked about it. Strategic planning is your home improvement, how you get better, how you how you take the house and make it better and better every year. I'm going to focus today on three and four. I will run through these real quick and just say, you know, culture, a lot of people try to understand it. It's an ambiguous term that's not for today. But I love to define culture. I love to talk about it. It's critically important, and it boils down to these three things. For me, belief and purpose, belief in each other, belief in the client. They work together in a well organized and structured way. Again, that's not what this talk is about. But I'll send the slides to anybody who wants it, and I'm up for the conversation. But at the end of the day, here's why it's important. Here's why I included it today. Your culture that is often embodied in your core values, your mission or vision statement, your purpose statement, which, by the way, I think you ought to, you should lean into one of those people who try to have a mission, vision. You know, niche, all of the, I think they get confusing, so I prefer, personally, I prefer a purpose statement and then core values. So why is that important, and why am I talking about it here in a management leadership conversation? Because your core values should be the driving force, the framework, the litmus test for how you to make all your decisions. So if you say we want to treat our clients like family, but you never call them back, then you're not living out your core values. You're not being true to your core values. Well, in some ways it would be true for me, sadly, because I don't call my mom enough, but it's not the way it should be. That's not the core value that I want to have, right? So it's not really a core value if I'm not doing it. So the reason that culture core values, these things are so important in management and leadership, is because they're the foundation of how we make our decisions and how we want our management team, our leadership team, to make decisions. I don't want my leaders to constantly have to come to me and say, How do I make a decision about this issue? That's not really leadership on their part, that's relying on me. Yes, I want them to know. I want that to come through coaching, but I want them to have a basic framework and understand, here's our values. When you aren't sure about a decision, go back to those values, and they'll become the litmus test. They're the compass for how to make your decision in your department with your people. The second thing is kind of that blueprint, org chart. It's so important for people in your organization, this really is a management tool, but there's something even better than an org chart. And I'll say it like this.

I'll go to what's called a functional accountability chart. I encourage everyone to number one. If you don't have an org chart, you need to develop one. But here's the difference, a functional accountability chart is not based upon the people that just happen to be in your firm, some that you've let stay in for five years too long. They're they're doing a hodgepodge role. It's not by design. Org charts are just a picture of what's there right now. A functional accountability chart is a picture of what should we look like when we really have the right roles in place and then we fill those roles with the right people. That's the difference, and it's a critical, critical difference. A lot of firms have an org chart, and they just build it based upon the people that they have in the firm, rather than saying, what are the roles that we needed in our firm in order to be as successful as possible? So for instance, at what point do you say, You know what we need a full time marketing director, or do you just have somebody that's good at marketing and it just kind of develops, and they just kind of are there, and they do marketing, and they also do the mail, and, you know, it's a hodgepodge, but they're on the org chart as the marketing director. That's not by design that just happened, and it might be a mess, a functional accountability chart forces you to take a step back and say, What should my organization look like, and what roles should be filled so that we can carry out that strategy and those tactics that you talked about so well early on in the webinar. So these things are the blueprint. These are, you know, the things. That are critical. Here's the management piece. If you want to boil down how to be a great manager, a great leader in a law firm, there are a few key points that you got to know. Number one, hiring is the most important thing that you do in management and leadership in any organization. Hiring is where it all starts. And I would argue and cheer on anybody. I would argue anybody who disagree with anybody who disagreed, and I would cheer on anybody who understood that 80% in my opinion, 80% of management, of leadership, of accountability, is done at the hiring phase. You can, you can accomplish 80% of needed management by hiring the right people. And I didn't say that very well, here's what I mean. When you hire the right people, they will self manage. You give them direction, you give them parameters, you give them the infrastructure, the tools, and they'll go and they'll run if you hire the right people, and they don't need massive amounts of infrastructure and things checking up on them and constant micromanaging in order for them to perform, they'll perform because they're the right person with the right tools in the right Spot. That is done by hiring. And if you don't hire right, you end up, usually either just guessing at it or or ending up as a micromanager, a high control micromanager, because your people ultimately you don't trust them because you didn't hire people that fit what you were looking for. So I'm a big believer in hiring. Anyone who wants please shoot me an email, talk to Jay, and I will send you my whole hiring system, starting with the shadow process. It's a key element to build from the foundation up the right team. The next thing is, in terms of management, leadership is going to be your onboarding, and I'm going to put onboarding and training here together just for the sake of time. Onboarding is really the early stages, the the helping them understand what is expected of them, what their role is, and giving them that really that that really strong honeymoon experience of joining the organization training. Sorry, I alluded to a cuss word there in the in the thing, but it is so different. So many firms struggle at having a good training program. And here's why it's I call it tyranny of the urgent. They never feel like it's the most critical thing. And yet you're probably you're losing a lot of money in two areas. That's your intake, and in your your case value, that's where you you you leak money like crazy and not maximizing value, and in missing the cases that you should be signing up, that's where you lose money. But you waste Money, and you waste time by having your best people do what I call campfire learning training. Somebody gets hired. Your best paralegal sits with them, but she doesn't have time to do that because she's got all these cases and she's doing three other things. So they don't get trained well, they get rushed. She's not maximized. She's not in her highest and best use situation, and that's how we do training. That's how most law firms ultimately do training. It's hodgepodge, it's scattered, it's not well designed, but the firms that will take some time in their quarterly planning, in their annual planning strategy sessions, to say we are going to build a training plan. They gain so much back because they are training their people. They've created resources they're not using their their best people all the time. Think about every time your paralegal team lead, or your best paralegal who knows everything you want your new paralegal to know, every time she or he spends all that time training someone, there's that much money out the door because they're not being productive, and then three weeks later, someone else is hired, and they do the same thing. And it's this repetitive, if you counted up all the time and money that was spent on campfire, learning and on very poor, inadequate training and the loss of time of productivity of the people who are typically practitioners and also doing the training, it would, you know, it would be daunting. It would be very concerning. And yet, most law firms approach training that way. You want to manage people well, you want to lead people well, build a structure, hire right on board and train them, and then have ongoing coaching. The last components, ongoing coaching, ongoing appreciation and ways that you are developing them. Then here is the next. Piece evaluating them based upon this model. Many people have heard of this. This isn't mine. This is Simon Sinek, one of the greatest leadership thinkers in of our day. I believe he has what he calls the culture performance matrix. This is what's used with Navy SEALs. And it's basically this. You have some folks everywhere on this scale or on this matrix, what you're looking for are people that are both high in culture and trust and also high in performance. Your A plus players, the dangerous for sake of time, I won't go into the whole explanation of this matrix and this grading system, but the most dangerous people in any organization are the C players, the people who are good at their job. They make you money. They seem to be the ones that you want to hold on to, but you put up with so much stuff from them, because often they may be a high performer, but their attitude is terrible. They don't believe in the core values they're they're just there for the paycheck. They will bring down your firm. I've seen this over and over and over again, people who perform their job well, but they're toxic, or they're they're literally, they're sinister, they're they're they're only looking out for their own best interests. They don't care about the well being of the firm. They don't care about the well being of their team members, and they pull people down. This is a management nightmare, because a leadership nightmare, because we don't want to let those people go, because they make us money. And yet, in the big picture, almost every firm who has experience with this would tell you, the longer you let someone like that stay in your firm, the worse it's going to be, and you're actually losing money because they bring down the rest of the team. They protect their kingdom, and they bring down the rest of the team. So if you've got someone in your firm that performs highly and you let them get away with things that are counter to what your value system is. The rest of the team is seeing it. They realize that there's a sacred cow, and you've lost respect of your team. I won't go into all the stories, but many times I've gone into a firm and had to root out some of these C players. And every time that I do, there's always a challenge. There's fear or concern with the owner, because they they this person is, you know, fits this description exactly, but they make them a lot of money. Every time that owner will trust me to go ahead and move those C players out of the organization, they end up seeing the rest of their team members really thrive, and I always, without fail, I always have multiple team members come up to me and thank me when the time comes that I move a toxic person, a toxic but high performer, out of an organization it's getting out of fast growing cancer that's sucking away the life and resources of the firm. We won't even get into ds because you should have never hired them in the first place if they were both bad culture and bad performance and a B, you can coach. So that's the that's the short answers there, and I won't go into all these things here.

boils down leadership really, really well, summarizes leadership really, really well, and people who are multipliers and not as Liz Wiseman says, diminishers, every leader should be a multiplier and not a diminisher. The last thing, and you mentioned, this is the planning. That's what fits in. That's what kind of keeps the home, keeps the organization, keeps the business running smoothly, and this is where all you get all your projects and things done. But the focus of today was the management, the leadership element, the people, the process, the structures that you need in place, and the values that undergird all of that stuff. So really enjoyed this and happy to answer any questions.

Bill, that was awesome, and we'll hold questions to the end, but I always sneak in a couple. But one thing folks seem to like is when I kind of sum up the the panelists presentation from my perspective, and I absolutely love your lead metaphor. I won't tell the whole story, but I was once on a national speakers tour, and the Vice President of Sales presented the first day, and he actually, he bombed. And so I went back to my hotel room that night, skipped the dinner, and used the metaphor of the home. And I really loved how you used the metaphor, the of a home or a business structure. And you said culture was the foundation, right? Culture is the foundation. And I absolutely love and everyone should watch Bill's talk on culture on our YouTube channel. Number two, you said the org chart's the blueprint, but you actually took it a step further to the accountability chart, which is like Eos, thinking that instead of just using your existing organizational chart with people in boxes. First you figure out the roles. What roles do we need people in? And then that's the blueprint. So that's like, you know, the architect writes a blueprint for your home, and that's your organizational chart, or your accountability chart. Then you said, the people in process? This is, is like the plumbing or the electrical. It's like the infrastructure. That was so true. And I would probably add one thing to that, it's the SOPs, the standard operating procedures. And I absolutely loved your slide about people in process. So you talked about hiring. Most important thing you do onboarding, the experience and expectations onboarding is critical, critical for turnover, right? Get it right. Train people properly so they're not frustrated in their job, so other people aren't frustrated working with them, and that's the most important thing for retention. Then you talked about training, you said hard as F, but it's worth it. I think the cuss word there is acceptable and appreciation consistent over the top and process, you know, those SOPs. Matter of fact, I took a screenshot of that. That's why I got that so, so correct. I

was about to say, incredible memory there. Jay, yeah,

it was. But that, that screenshot I sent to my management team because we're having our EOS full day quarterly planning session tomorrow, and those are areas that we've gotten good at. But one of our core values is to expect excellence. I don't believe we're excellent yet. Like our hiring is good, it's not excellent, our onboarding is much better, 1,000% better, not excellent. Our training not excellent. So we'll be working on that tomorrow. Thank you. My team's probably Oh no, not bill again, because Bill spoke at our conference and gave us all about 15 things we could get better at. You also. So you talked about the foundation, the people in process. One thing I wanted to mention, the on the accountability chart, you had a chart where you have performance and culture. It's like the x and y axis. So in Eos, they call that right person right seat. And so you you make sure the person you have the right people in every role based on their they fit your core values. So like our core values, expect excellence, make it fun and easy, solve it, own it. So we do we check off each person, like, do they make it fun and easy for their co workers, for their vendors, for their clients? Do they expect excellence? Do they own problems. Do they solve problems? You know, that's our our core values. So are they, first of all, do they fit our core values? And then do they have the job skills necessary, that the technical skills necessary? So maybe talk a little bit about that as it pertains to the right person in the right seat, like, how, what are some of the keystones you look for in determining that?

Yeah, so you know, especially in roles, when I'm bringing someone new into the firm, in the areas of what I would call new client team, which is intake, even paralegals, legal assistants, anybody in a support role. In fact, pretty much most of the team, other than your attorneys and maybe your obviously your experienced paralegals. I'm really interviewing the person and trying to figure out and does this person have the qualities necessary, the DNA that I've talked about, where I can train them, where I can develop them into the right seat on the bus, or that I can make sure that we put them in the right seat on the bus, as you alluded to. And you know, I do, I want to see, do they have natural talent at a certain thing? Do they have, you know, for instance, if, if you've got, you know, paralegals that don't like talking to people well, but they're, they're great at legal decision making or legal writing, whether they be a paralegal or an attorney, whatever they you know, you don't want to put them in a client facing forward position if they don't enjoy talking to people. And I would argue that's obviously a huge part of the role. And yet, some firms, you know, think that it's just about negotiating or the the practice of law doesn't include client care, I would argue that that's, you know, very misguided. And so people end up with folks with bad people skills, uh, working with clients. If you're in a situation like that, then you have to decide, am I going to keep that person in that role? Is there a role that we really do need, that we would be able to have a person that poor people skills, but great legal decision making ability, all right? Do we want to modify our functional accountability chart? Do we want to make an accept? Do we want to fit that? Talent onto the team in some way. But I think the danger is being tempted to put people in roles that may be on their resume but aren't a part of their skill set and their value system. And so that's always what I'm looking for. I'm looking to see what is this person skilled at, and what is their value system, and is that congruent, either with a role that we have or with something that we can train them to do? I've had many people that have come into the firm at one place and over time, grown and developed into a totally different role, because it became obvious that their skill set was more in that direction, and that's fantastic, but if you don't have tools in place, and you don't have leaders in place to use those tools to assess the people, then you'll never be able to make those key decisions.

On a related note, you mentioned that you share your hiring system with everybody, and so you all take good notes. Biggs.william@gmail.com, Bill offered to share system. That's B, I, G, G, s.william@gmail.com, and thank you for that, but maybe give us two or three key milestones of your hiring system.

It's called the shadow process. Have every candidate that goes through your initial screening meet with four to five of your team members from various parts of the firm. If it's an attorney, maybe they meet with two or three attorneys, but they also meet with the paralegal. They also meet with the front the person that is at the front desk. And in my system, they must get unanimous approval, unanimous win, unanimous thumbs up if that candidate is to be hired. The benefits of the system are enormous. Not only will your retention go up, your hit rate will go up extremely high in terms of the people that you hire, but you also see that your team members feel so much more invested and take ownership, because they are the ones having a huge part in choosing who will be on their team. So you train them in the system. You train your team into how how to be hosts and what they're looking for. They're not doing interviews like a reading a resume and doing an interview like HR might. They're looking for culture fit. Is this someone that I want in the foxhole with me? And the beauty of it, the power. It's not just beauty, it's power when the front desk person who is trustworthy embodies our culture has been with us for 10 years, and we're looking to hire an attorney, and that attorney, when that attorney meets with three of the other attorneys, they they are respectful and and appropriate and all of that, they sit and meet with the with the front desk person, and they feel like it's a waste of time. They feel like it's below them, and they treat that front desk person with less respect than they would others. Ding, ding, ding. It tells us something about that individual when the receptionist, when that front desk person has the power and knows that they are empowered to say, This person was not, you know, no, I say, thumbs down to this person, and I say, I love it, then we're then we're not hiring them. The the trust and the empowerment that comes on the team when they know that what they say has value in terms of who we add to this team, their trust level for leadership goes off the charts. And

last one, and maybe we keep this to a minute and we'll get to Dominic, because he's got great stuff. You quoted Jocko willing, and you Extreme Ownership, and you said every problem is a leadership problem. And one of the things that's been really revolutionary for me with the EOS is we've evolved from a lot of stress being on my plate that I felt I had to solve every problem. And now I feel with the OS that we as a leadership team can can like I don't need to do it, but we need to get it done, and we need to assign it, and we need to get it done, and that's been working so well for us. But do you want to talk talk about that insight that you know, every problems leadership problem has got to get done, but the leadership leader doesn't have to do it.

Yeah, I'll do it in less than a minute. Number one, it really comes down to no victims allowed in leadership, right? It's believed that you have the responsibility and the influence to do something about the things that need to change that it's a mentality, right? The second thing is, the number one issue I see where firms get stuck when they adopt EOS or scaling up is that they never get below their leadership team in terms of getting. Everyone involved to help solve the problems of the firm. So don't just make it say, Okay, well, it's not just about me as the owner or the visionary solving problems. I'm going to I'm going to get my executive team, and they're going to solve some problems too. No, don't get stuck there. Take it even further. Get everybody involved in solving the problems of the firm and in harnessing the opportunities, and you'll have, you'll you'll grow at light speed.

Yeah, kudos to that. And we're EOS is interesting, like they phase it in. So we did, you know, the first quarter, we sort of trained the leadership team. The second quarter, we got good at running our L 10 meetings. The third quarter, we've been rolling the L 10 meetings to our teams, and I just had an L 10 meeting with the sales team today, and a couple of the folks had problems to solve, and we're just they're learning the tools and terminologies of Eos. But again, it's such a great the greatness in the system is the common terminology, and then the system's great, but everybody knows what you're asking because they're starting to learn the terminology system. I love, love this. We could go on and on and on. I didn't oversell when I said, you'd be amazing. But we will get to Dominic, because he's got stuff. I love his stuff too. So I'm going to pull up his slide for one sec, and then I'll let you go to slides, Dominic, sure, because there's a couple things we got to dig a little deeper on, you know. So elevate business. Coaching is your current business, and you're consulting 100% with law firms, right,

correct? Yeah, all over the country. So I'm in Massachusetts, but I work with firms all over the place. And

he doesn't sound like he's from Massachusetts, right? So you were a global ops director in your previous role. Tell me about that job.

Yeah, so you can, Jay, you're right. I'm a transplant, if I can use that term, originally from from Northern Ireland, worked in the UK for 10 years. Moved over here. I worked in the investment management industry for 15 years, number of different roles, but the final one I had was global ops. So it was kind of the chief operating officer for for making that particular firm, on the business development side operate. Make sure, you know, things actually happen, things were translated, and you know that there were efficiencies and all, all the type of stuff that that bill just talked about, but give me a really great perspective to look at things across markets and norms and so on. You

came from Northern Ireland. Do you have a YouTube story?

had they internationally yet? Or just, oh

yeah, they were they taken off. I mean, I've seen them two times since then, but,

yeah, I've seen them five times. Tell me about the blockchain association that you were the chairman of.

Yeah, you know, the promise of technology disruption. I am always looking at what's going on out there. And when I first heard about, you know, digital currencies, I said, Oh, that that's really interesting. Took me into the world of blockchain trying to figure out what it was. And so, you know, in the Boston area there's, there's a lot of, you know, technology companies, institutes of learning. And so we said, well, what's the angle here for for the Massachusetts economy? And so we set up an association that's still running today, and all about education and opportunity in that space, to kind of figure out what's the angle and what's the opportunity?

I love it well with that, let me turn it over to you. You can share your slides and Sure.

All right. Well, first of all, thanks so much, Jane. Secondly, Bill, that was terrific. I have a whole pile of notes, and I'm definitely going to be following up to ask for your slides and your other tips. I love the thing, the quote I remember the most is, you know, it's not your fault, but it is your problem. I really like that one. So on my, on my slide here, I'm just going to offer a little bit of a different perspective. So, so Bill, you know, works with larger firms. The law firms that I'm working with are really small. We're talking here about, there's probably, you know, two to four partners, attorneys. It's they're certainly not at the 40 to 50 person skill. And so their needs are, are different. They are.

Dominica, I'll cut in for one sec. Sorry for messing up your flow, but I left out the best part of how we met. So the who's actually, you can blame them, because it was my immigration attorney who got me over the finish line with my US immigration, the gersteins, and they, I was talking to them, and they said they were having a great year. I said, Oh, great. You know. Know what's been working? They said, Well, we got a really good plan. I said, Oh, what's your plan? They said, Well, we got this guy, Dominic, and he's given us very good focus and planning and numbers. And so that's how we met and showed me the plan, and then we did an interview, so you can hear a full hour with Dominic on our podcast. But with that, I'm going to shut up again and turn it back to

you. No, no. You know, it's kind of interesting, Jay, because, you know, we're recording this. It's the end of September. It's week 39 of the year. It's essentially, you know, the end of third quarter. So this is perfect timing. This is the time where I'm, I'm, you know, working with my clients to say, let's start thinking about next year. Let's be and, you know, putting together a plan on that, but, but my clients are small, small law firms all over the country. You know, I work with immigration attorneys, family law, estate planning, business attorneys, immigration, etc, etc. So these are the really small law firms. They don't have a lot of resources. There's no coo. They are probably too early and too small for, you know, skill up or Eos, but nonetheless, I work with them to figure out the plans. So there's a lot of commonality, even though I'm working with really small firms. So I'll just put that out there at the start. So let me just my clients are small law firms, and, you know, they went to law school. They didn't go to business school. They may be terrific lawyers, but you know, managing a firm, finding your business, going your firm, is all really, really tough. And many of these small law firms, they're working, you know, too long, too hard for too little, and it's all on them. They are overwhelmed, very often overwhelmed with the number of things that they have to do, and sometimes they're overwhelmed by the number of ideas that they have and the number of possible solutions as well. So so that's really where I come in and I help them. Let me just move straight away here, but it doesn't have to be that way. And what I what I do when I'm working with my clients, is I'm really helping them try to manage and grow their business while still being a great lawyer and having a life outside of work. You know, sometimes people are kind of in despair a little bit, but it is doable. And so what I'm going to do now is just, I'll share a really simple, a four step business planning tool, even a really small law firm, you know, can can use and move forward on. At the end of that, I'm going to show an example as we go along. And then at the end of it, I'm just going to throw out a few kind of themes or ideas about things that I observe when I'm working with these firms, and another considerations when they're when they're doing that planning. So here we go. The first thing that's kind of really important to have, and this may seem obvious, right? But you need to have an idea in mind. Some people will call it envision. But you need to be thinking about, where do you want to go with your firm? And that's just like an on Bill slide there where he had, you know, a design for a firm. This is kind of like the foundation. What is this? What is this firm? What does it look like five years from now? And this step is really important, because you don't want to find that you have climbed the wrong mountain. So basically, this is part of what I work with the clients. Help them articulate, think about what it is, and articulate and get it out John and paper. Because ultimately, where they're going with their firm, or want to go with their firm, it's kind of like their North Star. Everything kind of comes back to that. So here's an example that I have, you know, small firm in five years, they want to have 10 attorneys. They have a niche identified working with, you know, businesses that you know, either the own developer, they manage real estate. They have a firm revenue goal, a profit goal as well, which very often people miss. They talk about revenue, but not the profit and and there's going to be two equity partners. So there's already an expectation set of who's going to really own the business and benefit and derive the value from it, and they want to own their own building. So we have a good plan five years on one thing just to be, and I've seen this before, is, you know, this vision. You don't want to have the kitchen sink. It's not that important. Just get the core elements on building blocks of what you what you want. Because really, at the end of the day, as you're operating your plan and having goal setting and checking. The real question is, are you moving closer to that vision that you have? Are you moving further away? But the first step is actually to get it out and down on paper so you can actually define it. The second step, and we talked a lot already about goals and. Add. Goals are really important. It's it's goals, I think, Bill, you call them objectives. I'm going to use a little different nomenclature. It's okay. It's this, in some ways, it's just the same thing. You have the vision. But what is it that you need to do? You know, when you think about next year, what are the things that you want to focus on to move your business forward? And so with the clients that I work with, you're really small, resource constrained, trying to do everything, practice law, find plans and manage the firm, I like to keep them to really three goals, three meaty goals, but just to have three things that they want to accomplish in their business in that year. The reason why only three is I want them to be focused and I want them to have a good target to aim for. I'm just going to say, keep it simple, stupid, because I would never, ever, ever call attorneys or lawyers stupid because I don't want to get into an argument, but, I just say, keep it super simple. Lawyers have a tendency to get caught in the weeds, to over analyze, to be, you know, weighing in the detail when it actually isn't always helpful when it comes to to managing and running the law firm. So it's the lawyer fat hat coming off and the business hat. Just keep just keep it simple. And Bill already alluded to the the SMART acronym, so I'm not going to go back over that again, but I do want to show you an example here of again, again. This is an exercise that I'm working with my clients with right now. This is for a real client of mine, and we picked out three goals, revenue target, net profit, and then part of that is they need to expand their lineup. Said, Walk star attorneys. Bill mentioned 80% of this in terms of managing your law firm is on the recruitment side. So it's actually a really significant part of their goals to get that hiring right this year, so they meet the smart definition. And these three goals also tie in with the vision that's over the five year time horizon. So first we get the vision, then we're still setting up the goals for next year, but it's not enough just to have goals. You have to identify

the milestones of how you the high of you going to accomplish those goals. And you also need to, you know, identify some of the things that may go wrong, quite frankly. So the basic message is, you're going to have goals, they're going to be smart, they're going to relate to your vision. But it's not enough just to step and forget, right? So the stepping stones, they need to be identified. So better to identify those upfront. So here the next part of this plan that we're kind of putting together. We call it. We call it milestones. So again, this is an example where, as some of the projects and milestones that need to be accomplished over a 90 day period in order to move forward on the goals, they're listed here, some of these will be, you know, accomplished, taken off and replaced with something else. But what it really gets down to is saying, Are we making progress? What do we need to be working and focusing on over the next 90 days? I like to call this working. The plan makes sense, right? And typically, with my clients, I'm helping them do that because they don't have COO, they don't have an HR them, you know, little to no resources to help them. And Bill mentioned there about the tyranny of the urgent, they get pulled away so easily. So I work on this component, where I'm working with them either once a month or twice a month to make sure that they're actually getting traction, that they're moving forward on the stepping stones that are so important to get them to their goal and finally, take action. Nothing happens unless action is taken, and two weeks is too long to wait, right? So what I encourage my clients with this, with this plan, is, on a weekly basis to ask themselves, what does the guy need to do over the next week in order to make progress on the milestones that we've identified so we accomplish your goals and achieve our vision? So this is really boiling it down to, you know, what do I need to do this week? Right? Much easier if, if you can do it that way. And you know two things with this. One is, I encourage my clients to every Sunday where the week starts to sit down and to fill out one of the steps for this week doesn't have to be a laundry list, three or four things that they can accomplish in the week that are going to move them. Forward, and that helps keep it manageable. The second thing I asked them to do is to carry this, carry this around with them so that it doesn't get forgotten, like when you go to accomplish they're actually living and breathing because they literally carry this around with them, because this is their one page plan to move their business, and they should be able to recite this off, you know, no problem at all. So I really do ask them to carry it around. So there you have it. That's the tool that I use with my small clients. It's, it's simple, right? It's just not easy. And with my clients, it's so difficult for them to be able to focus, to have the bandwidth, to be able to make progress on this consistently. So with that, I'm just going to, I'm just going to add a couple of other themes, if you like, for, you know, we've talked out here about a tool that I use with small firms, but there's in order to have an effective plan, if you like, there's some things that are, I think are I think are important to bring up. And the first one that I bring up is all organizations, yes, even small law firms, they should be asking, what needs to change at the firm? What needs to change at the firm? You know, the world's changing, as we all know. So this, this, I'll call it behavior or skill of looking at at the competitive landscape and saying things are changing. How, how should we be changing? Needs to be part of the of the planning for your firm. So you can do this by asking this yourself or your clients. Some of my some of my clients are not comfortable asking, you know, clients or team, and you can have an outsider ask or gather that information, or you have several clients, and I actually do it for them. They, you know, they find it it's less awkward if they work with someone from the outside, and they also get good and real feedback on that. But asking what needs to change. What needs to change, what's what's good, what's been working well at your firm in the past year? What are you excited about? What have you got right? And then the next one is the bad. What's not working so well, Bad's probably not a great word, but what needs to be changed. And then the third one is opportunity. What's the opportunity that's out there? And how can we how can we see some of that? So it's not just about having a nice template in the tool, right? You gotta ask these questions. The next thing in the environment today, we gotta always be looking, especially with my really small class, how do you get more lift? And I could go into this for a very long time, but I'm not going to. Outsourcing needs to be top of mind. Everybody knows what that is. There's a variety of ways to do it. The next thing is leveraging technology. We've heard about some technologies today, all firms need to be asking themselves, how can I leverage technology to make things easier? You know, operate more efficiently, provide better service to clients, data, tons of data out there. Really difficult to run a business if you don't have the right data, you should know where's your business coming from, who are your most important clients and referral sources, and your revenue? How is it breaking down by different type of matter, and are those matters profitable as well? Delegate I showed earlier my my law firm owner, carry in the boulder. They've got, they've got to find either internally, people that can delegate and help them carry that load, or outsource, have external partners come in and help and in some ways, as a in some ways, my background is as a CEO, they're kind of doing that a little bit. When they got to delegate, they got to delegate, they got to trust but verify and repeatable process. How do we have to not? What do we need to do? So this doesn't keep coming up. We talked about that earlier. There's a lot there. There's a lot for my little smaller law firms. And the thing that I emphasize, because it can be overwhelming, and lawyers like to get, you know, into detail on some of these things, like technology, which CRM, I've heard this one is better than that one, but at the end of the day, just pick, just pick something. Get Started, define what step you're on, and just take that lower step first and start to explore. So don't over engineer, don't overthink. Just commit to getting started and moving forward on one or two of these, and you'll be well served because you've started your journey. And finally, Bill, Bill mentioned this, it's really hard. I'm, you know, I'm new to the legal industry. I'm not a lawyer, right? But I know to be successful, you have to have the right people. And in my work with law firms. Uh, sometimes I've noticed that they carry people and hope that they're going to come around, and very often, they're not going to come around. So to those small law firm owners that may be listening, you deserve to have an A team, and to be successful, you're going to need to have an A team. You're also going to need that performance management process, and you need to be willing to replace, upgrade and develop your team. And that can be scary, even for lawyers to have to make some of those changes, but to be to move your firm to where you want it to be, sometimes that that's necessary. I do have a template as well that I that I can share a tool that I use just with my clients. We go through it quarterly. We talk about each of their staff. Each of their staff and how they're doing. So, you know, that's something that that you want just ping me, you know, on my on my email, I can certainly share that with you. And so really, just in summary, successful law firms are those that know where they're going. They've got clear goals, they know the milestones or the stepping stones, and they're reviewing how they're doing, and they work the plan. So with that, Jay, I'm going to finish up and hand it back to you.

Yeah, so and it is, and there's always fear. Like, I want to hire people how to make sure that that I've got work for them. So in that particular case, there's a lot of work that we're doing around business development, so getting, getting the owner, the law firm owner, out there, meeting with the ideal clients and prospects and referral partners that he's looking to get. So, you know, real focus on business development, and that requires having the bandwidth to do that business development and having clarity around who it is that they want to have as clients. This firm, Jay, believe it or not, does no marketing whatsoever. Currently none. So the bar is low, and they're actually very good at what they do. It's just the rest of the world doesn't know that. So let's just get them started on step one about getting out and speaking with people that can send, send their send them their ideal plan type to them.

All right. Well, good, good luck to them, because that's an aggressive goal. Yeah, another note that I took, as you said, very important that firms learn not to carry people. And there's another, you know, common business term, hire slow and fire fast. Yeah. And I really like Bill's idea. And as a matter of fact, I wrote it down. We're going to, we're in the middle of hiring a couple roles, and I'm going to implement it, where four to five people are going to interview that person just to make sure there's that culture fit, especially now that we know, you know, we have those principles of our culture. We've defined our core values. Second thing we use is predictive index for hiring. Want to talk a little bit about, you know, hire slow and fire fast from your coaching, yeah,

and, you know, in my in my experience, you know, because I have my approaches, is always very customized, because I got to meet my clients where they are on the step that they're on. So we have to have some pretty frank conversations. And very often they want somebody to come good, they'll say, Well, only if this and and I certainly offer them some guidance right around, around what I think, but I also say, hey, this doesn't work. Like, how long are you going to give this? How long are you going to put up to this? And that may sound, you know, a little bit strong, unreasonable, but it's actually not. They are running a business, and if. Things aren't performing. It directly impacts them and their pocket, because they get paid last. And you know what I find in the time that I've worked with them is when they have made that decision, there's an immediate relief, like a cortisone shot, right? It improves because it has been impacting everybody around them. So once the unpleasant part is done, then they have the fun part about upgrading. So if that last person wasn't working out for whatever reason, let's get started on who that ideal hire is. And you know, I know you mentioned predictive index. I use disc drivers and motivators EQ assessment as well. I mean, Bill mentioned, like, I haven't talked about it during culture, but attitude, it's incredibly important. And if you can get it right, you can save yourself some time and frustration by getting that right right team. So in general, tough to do. To think about, you know, getting people off the bus, but sometimes you need to do it so you can stop at the next stop and pick up somebody who's going to be

great. Did we talk about Crystal? Crystal? Knows, no, you mentioned the DISC profile, and I love to show this. Yeah, I'll do it quickly, because we're running at time, and I want to open up for a couple questions, but this is an incredible tool. Yes, I

started it, yes,

and it actually gives me your DISC profile. So it's telling me you're a driver, you're ambitious, determined and confident. You communicate, you know, and I should communicate with you with boldness, adventurous spirits, speak with high energy. Don't give in depth product description. Don't be but the amazing thing is, with this tool, Crystal knows C, R, y, s, t, a l, knows K, N, O, W, s, I can see Dominic's this profile. And so it's fantastic. You know, obviously, for people, you're working with Sandler profile, but really fantastic tool for interviewing for sales, and gives you a whole bunch of sales strategy, like, if I'm selling to Dominic, yeah, let's say we're in the proposal negotiation. It tells me how to it gives me advice on how to negotiate.

No, I love it, and I have seen it, and I'm immediately thinking about this lawyer who needs to go to 400,000 in revenue, right? This could be a great tool. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah,

and it actually gives, if you have the subscription tool, it gives you a whole bunch of, I think you get 10 or 23 of what I just did. So I just want to open up some more questions. We've got a few that came in for the Q and A, so just go to the Q and A please. In the Zoom chat, we got one from Carol, who said, and I think Bill's with us, but he had to go mobile. So Bill, it's okay if you're not on camera, if you want to answer too. But yeah, I'm here. Jay, awesome. Thanks, buddy. What is the planning cycle, like, what time of the year should, should you do planning and how many times a year? It's questions from Carol G

I'm happy just to take a quick one. You know, I always I'm focused on calendar quarter, just because I was in the corporate world, everything happens quarterly, right? So, so where we are right now, I'm finishing up the third quarter. I'm now in the fourth quarter. I'm having the discussions about, what do we want to accomplish next year? Because we kind of know three quarters in the year's kind of done. Some things might surprise us, but you kind of know how the year is going to shake out in the last 13 weeks, right? So for me, the annual planning, I'm doing it probably second, third week of October. I'm thinking about next year, because, again, there's money involved. It could be budgets. What are you thinking about for personal development? Since it's so important, are you putting the budget towards it? What are you thinking about marketing? All these things require resources. So now's the time to think about what you need for next year, and then the quarterly stuff, you know, the end of calendar quarter, as soon as soon as we have the financials from QuickBooks, it doesn't have to be final. Soon as we have a good print on what it looks like, we're reviewing the quarter, and we are correcting as well. We're not, we're not waiting for things to play on. We're reviewing what happened in the quarter, and then we are, you know, we're, if we have to change tactics, we do, but the quarterly is like the cutoff for me. I don't know if you want to add to that, J or both.

No, we do the same thing. We do annual planning. We're, actually, we're doing our quarterly OS now, and then, I think we're doing our annual one next month. So it'll be done before the month of December. Yeah. And the mistake, you know, I've seen, you know, either myself or others make in the past, is like, they'll do their planning meetings like the second week of January or the third week of January, by the time. Even get around to anything like the first quarter shot. So yeah, Bill, I don't know if you have any other thoughts on timing.

Yeah, that's a great point. Jay, I agree my rhythm is always all quarterly planning is, and we are on quarters and annual so all quarterly planning is done at the two weeks before the upcoming quarter that we can be prepared with all of our priorities. And I call them critical number targets, and then annual planning I always do in November for the upcoming year. And I include q1 planning, quarterly planning with that. So we first do the annual planning, and then we break that down into our first order of objectives or priorities.

Love it. I love it. I'm glad I asked, because, you know, we're we're doing our planning meeting tomorrow. Very real for me. So I'm going to sneak in another question for myself, and that is, I forget when I wrote this down, but one of you was talking about hiring and people, and someone yesterday told me that one of the things they look for in hiring people is the figure shit out gene. Sorry, Bill's mom, I use another cuss word, figure stuff out gene, and that's so critical, is like, people who we have one of our core values is solve it. And that's like, you know, we tell people, you know, 90% of the time, if you can't figure something out, you can Google it and and there's a great answer. And now the Google AI actually writes you the answer. And if it doesn't get it right, go to chat. GPT. But what do you all think about that as one of the core values in hiring folks. Bill, maybe go first, because I think it was you had talked about that. I

love that I'm adding that the solvent gene, or the figure it out, you know, a little bit of a twist on that is one that that I've used for years, but I like yours better. I've always said, I want to, I want to, need to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, not, go, go, go. So I would rather have to pull you back because you're too assertive and you're taking too much initiative and you're messing stuff up. I would rather have to do that than have to push someone to do something. Great.

Point, and is there a way to interview for that?

Yeah, you know, I interviews are great, but unfortunately, again, attorneys, they're not, you know, they've fallen into a situation where they're, they're managing and recruiting, right, that they're not experienced. So really good questions. Now, hey, can you tell me about a time? Can you give me an example you mentioned there, you know? So really questioning, but looking for examples, because it's basically as validation, right? Because everybody said, Of course, I'm good at that. Give me an example, you know? How do you how do you feel about, you know, how do you feel about, you know, managing the latitude that you have, you know, I asked them, like, What type do you prefer? You know, because I'm again, trying to get the sense. And then the other, the other thing as well is the the assessments we mentioned, predictive index, disc drivers, motivators, EQ, they'll tell you as well, not 100% but pretty close, remarkably close, actually. And they can sometimes highlights, you know, something that is worthy of of, you know, digging in a little bit more on, hey, you know, you say this, but will actually, depends. Sometimes some of my clients will actually share the report with them and say, Hey, this is, this is yours. It's just to keep it something we like to do because it highlights, you know, developing the needs when you start, and all that sort of stuff. But it's what it's one way.

You know, I just thought of this question, and maybe you both can answer just quickly with a number. But you know, like a great baseball hitter hits 300 a great hockey goalie saves 91% of all the shots. What do you think a great hiring rate is for a company, because we don't hit every time. So what percent of hires should you be able to hit on?

I actually do measure this. J and I'm I try to hold myself to a 90% hit rate over one year's time,

so that nine out of 10 people that I hire should still be with us after one year, because we want them to be, not because I want my numbers to

work out. Yeah, so it goes both ways, right, like, if they don't stay and you like them, that's a retention loss. If you have to make a change, make it quickly, but that's a hiring fault, and also the cost of training and onboarding and whatnot. Dominic, what's your number?

Yeah, you know, for me, I. In my mind, this may not be specific to legal but about a third of fires don't work on whether that's in the 12 month period or not, right? But about 30% so that would mean 70% do, which is seven out of 10, and that's the minimum. So think about, if you're good at that selection process. Go into what Bill said, your numbers go way up because you're very picky. You bring in all the people. It's unanimous vote. We know the characteristics we want to have, their EQ, your numbers go up significantly, right? That's just one other thing that I think people miss a lot. And again, these are sometimes you can be a little bit uncomfortable exit interviews when somebody is leaving, whether it's of their own accord or, you know, would they be willing to share their perspective of what it's been like? What did they do well? What did they not do well? And having that somebody, yeah, he's not, you know, at the firm, an outside advisor, a trusted person, can be really, really valuable.

Love it. Last question comes in from Bert,

a j1 if you can hear me just, I love the question about interviewing for the solve it gene, or the Go, go, go instead of whoa, whoa. A couple of questions that I love with that is, tell me some times that you or your team or the people that you led, tell me about some times that you you solved the problem and and I'm looking for, I'm poking around to see whether or not they solved the problem without direction, whether it was they took initiative, or whether it was under the direction. You know, of another leader above them. Another thing that I that I like to ask from time to time, is, when's the last time you took a risk at work? I love that open ended question because, and I refuse to give them any details, any further clarification, just when's the last time you took a risk at work? And if they tell me that, you know, they asked the girl out then I say, you're fired, you're not hired. But I think that helps a lot to find out their risk taking, because sometimes, and you can find this on disc and predictive index, sometimes it's the people that are attractive to control oriented bosses that are the ones that will never be a solvent person, because they're too regimented, they're too they're rule followers, and they're afraid to step outside the lines because they don't want to get anything wrong.

Well, guys, this was awesome, awesome, awesome. I'm sure that the people watching in the future like no no, keep going. Keep going. But I want to thank you both so much for your time and awesome, excellent input. And with that, we'll wrap this month's Webinar.

Awesome. Thanks so much Jay for having me on Great meeting you. Dominic,

Thank you, Jay.

Thanks so much, Bill. Thanks Dominic.

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