January 17, 2024 • 52 mins
Get in touch with Craig here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craiggoldenfarb/
https://www.goldlaw.com/
Owning a business is a challenge. Knowing how to keep innovating in your business is an even bigger one. Join restaurant owner, motivational speaker, and innovation expert Sara Frasca each week as she guides fellow business owners in taking the next step to level up their business. If you've ever pondered hiring a business coach but want a sample first, come along for the adventure!
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Sara Frasca is the founder and owner of Trasca & Co Eatery in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, an experienced and engaging motivational speaker, and the CEO of global business coaching firm Point NorthEast.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You're listening to level upyour business, the podcast where
we talk to hardworking businessowners and leaders and help them
solve real issues in real time.
I'm your host, Sarah Frascarestaurant owner, keynote
speaker and business coach. I'vespent my career not only in
corporate America, but also asan entrepreneur, carrying on my
(00:21):
family's legacy through myrestaurant. Now a business coach
and consultant. I'm helpingother businesses to use creative
problem solving and innovativethinking to drive lasting
change. Stay tuned to hear someinspiring guidance that will
help you to level up yourbusiness. All right, well,
(00:42):
today, I wanted to join in justreally welcome Craig Goldfarb.
Craig, thank you for being apart of our point ne level up
your business podcast.
My pleasure, Sara. Great to behere.
Yeah. And it's good to see you.
I know it hasn't been too long.
Since I've seen you in person.
Where are you calling in fromtoday?
(01:04):
I'm in West Palm Beach, Floridaat my main office operations?
Great.
Great. I know, you go aroundspeaking and stuff. So I wasn't
sure if you are in your officeor on location somewhere else.
So good, good. Well, you know,you and I have known each other
for a while. But I'll just setup for our listeners a little
bit about the podcast. Andhopefully they've joined us on
(01:25):
other episodes. But really, weare trying to get a sense from
business owners, from businessleaders, where they've been, you
know, what has helped them intheir decision making along
their path and in where they aretoday. And then really where
they want to go to in thefuture. And if we can be of help
and ideas today, or you know,I'm the host today, sometimes we
(01:46):
have several of us. But youknow, it would be fun to
brainstorm in the moment withyou if there's an opportunity.
So again, thank you for beinghere. My pleasure. So with that,
you and I are well acquainted.
I've known you for many, manyyears. But can you share with
our viewers and listeners alittle bit about your history?
Why did you decide to become anattorney?
(02:10):
Well, I grew up on the westcoast of Florida. And I had the
wonderful distinction in the1970s of being raised by a
mother who happened to be anattorney. And in the 70s, there
weren't a lot of femaleattorneys. So I had an
interesting role model at myhouse as a very strong and very
smart woman who I discovered atan early age, I was a lot like
(02:31):
her. And as I watched herstruggle and fight as a female,
as a criminal defense attorneyin Clearwater, Florida, I was
really inspired to follow in herfootsteps. And as I grew up, I
realized I was good at debating.
And I liked to have the logicaland analytical part of my brain
being used a lot like my mom. SoI decided to follow in her
(02:54):
footsteps and had a neat, neatjourney along the way. It's
great. It's really great. Haveyou always practiced in Florida?
I have. I went off to college inNorth Carolina, and then came
back to law school at theUniversity of Florida, in
Gainesville, Florida. And then Imoved down to Miami to start my
career when I was about 26 yearsold. Yeah,
(03:16):
that's great. That's wonderful.
And I know you're a dad, a prouddad. So what about your personal
world?
Sure. Well, I'm a father of twogirls, aged 21 and 23. Neither
of them is interested in law,which I'm fine with, would have
been okay either way. The onesin college and ones just out of
college. I've been married for25 years and celebrated my 25th
(03:38):
year anniversary last week. AndI live here in a city called
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,which is about 10 minutes or 15
minutes north of West Palm Beachon the East Coast.
That's great. Andcongratulations on your
anniversary.
Thank you.
That's a huge deal. It is. Yes.
Well. Okay, so you became anattorney? And then how did you
(03:58):
decide you wanted to open yourown practice because of course,
there are many, many differenttypes of, you know, law that you
can practice. And then there'sthe scary component of being an
entrepreneur opening your ownoffice?
Well, I tell a joke, and please,everybody take this as a joke,
that actually slipped my way tothe top. So what I mean by that
(04:19):
course joke is that I dated agirl while I was in law school,
who was getting her master'sdegree in journalism at the
University of Florida, so shewas not in law school. After a
week or two of dating her Irealized her dad was a lawyer.
And that's not why I starteddating her. Didn't even know
really. So as I was going to lawschool, and she was finishing up
getting her master's degree injournalism. We got pretty
(04:40):
serious. And we dated my finalyear of law school at the
University of Florida, and itwas her final year getting her
master's degree. So we gotpretty serious and with my 2.8
GPA in law school, yeah, I didsay at 2.8. I didn't get a lot
of interviews, out of law schoolwith any of the good law firms
because I had such a crappy GPA.
So her father took me to dinnertowards the end of our, my, my
(05:04):
law degree and said, So I heardyou're getting a lot of
interviews. And after I startstopped laughing, he said, Well,
hey, loser. Are you seriousabout my daughter? And I said,
Yeah, I'm serious about yourdaughter. And he said, Why don't
you come to work for me inMiami? And I said, You're a
personal injury lawyer, right?
And he said, Yeah. And I said,Well, I guess since I don't have
(05:25):
any other offers, maybe I'lltake you up on yours. So I
literally did sleep my way tothe top. And that's how I got my
job offer and that I was datingmy girlfriend. And so he hired
me. And the blessing of that wasthat he became a mentor for me,
and taught me when he brought medown to his personal injury firm
in Miami, what I didn't realizewas how lucky I was going to be
(05:48):
because he gave me an education,both in business and in law. And
what was so great about that wasthat he ran a large business.
And he had come from a businessbackground, and a business law
firm, before he started being apersonal injury attorney. So he
knew how to run a business. Buthe also had a good trial law
firm. So he turned me over tohis trial attorneys who taught
(06:10):
me how to be a lawyer. And hementored me, as to how to be a
businessman. So what I say is, Igot a dual degree in law, I got
a business mentorship from myfather in law. And I learned how
to be a trial lawyer in fiveyears. So at the end of those
five years, I could kind ofwrite my ticket, because I knew
how to do both. So I moved up toWest Palm Beach from Miami. In
(06:33):
the meantime, I had married hisdaughter, who was still my wife.
And after working at another lawfirm for a couple of years, in
2002, I decided to go out on myown. And that was about 22 years
ago. And I've never looked back.
So using the mentorship that Iso greatly got from my father in
law, who is still my mentor, andstill one of my best friends. He
(06:53):
taught me that dual degree Imentioned before in business and
law, so that really set me on apath to understanding where my
happiness, or my happy placewas, was it being a lawyer? Was
it being a business person? Orwas it being both, and after
about 10 years, I realized itwas really being a business
person. So that's why I decidedto take the CEO route, instead
(07:15):
of the trial lawyer route, eventhough I had been a trial lawyer
for 10 years. That'san interesting, I mean, I love
how you've set it up. Becausesome owners still want to do the
trial lawyer route, they letsomeone else run their business,
maybe there's a back end CEO orsomeone else, but they don't
(07:38):
necessarily want to get in onthe business side. So tell tell
me a little bit more about thebusiness side. Sure.
One of when I speak about thischoice, I talk about a
continuum. And the continuum onone side is full time CEO, on
the other side is full timelawyer. And there's no wrong
(08:01):
answer for where you are on thatcontinuum, you could be either
on one side or the other, orsomewhere in the middle. And if
one of your favorite things todo is go to court, be in trial,
do depositions, then don't givethat up. But that wasn't my
happy place. I realized after 10years that my happy place was
sitting at my desk, being inmeetings. And I know that sounds
(08:23):
weird. But you know, being inmeetings and running the show,
yeah. So if you are really anentrepreneur, and that's where
you're happy places, make ityour path and your vision to get
there. And that's what I did,starting 15 years ago. And now
I'm there, which is I haven'thandled the case in over 10
years, literally over 10 years,I haven't touched one case. But
that's because that's where Iwant to be, you can surf the
(08:46):
middle of the continuum, youcan, it's just that you need to
surround yourself with peoplewho are on one side or the
other. Because if you're goingto serve right in the middle,
then you're gonna have a lot ofbusiness things to do, but
you're gonna have a lot of casesto work on. So you need to
surround yourself with peoplewho just do the business, and
surround yourself on the otherside with people who just do the
law, right? So you can placeyourself anywhere on that
(09:08):
continuum you want, as long asyou understand you're there. And
then surround yourself on bothsides with people who fill in
the gaps.
I think that's great. I mean, Isee a lot of people struggling,
you know, whether they're in lawor in another type of business
with that really hard kind ofsoul searching of where do I
want to be on this continuum?
And then as they're looking attheir people, you know, perhaps
(09:30):
a leadership team, their trustedadvisors around them, you know,
it's it's hard for them to fitthose people in around them
because as they've grown, theywere doing everything. And so
they start to kind of narrowtheir spectrum and those people
maybe don't fit perfectly aroundthem. I mean, do you see the
(09:54):
same Ido, you have to really know
yourself to know where the gapsare and had a business coach
once who said, Show me yourschedule, and I'll show you your
priorities. So you tend to dothe things that you like doing.
So if your schedule is mostlybusiness stuff, and you're
basically at peace withyourself, it means you really
liked the business. If it'smostly legal stuff, then you
(10:14):
probably are leaning towardsbeing an attorney. So unless
you're forcing your stuff selfto do stuff you hate, take a
look at your schedule, becausethat usually shows where you
have pressed the easy button. Ifyou don't do any business stuff,
it means you don't like it. Thatmeans it just makes sense. So
that's why you don't do anybusiness stuff is because you
don't enjoy it. Maybe need a CO, or even a CEO or a CFO, you
(10:36):
know, the C level staff to comein and run that part of your
show, but you need them. Youcan't run a show just just as an
attorney alone. Yeah,no, I totally agree. Okay, so
you were growing, and you weredeciding kind of at this 10 year
mark, that you wanted to go theCEO route? Can you talk a little
(10:56):
bit about that? I mean, how didthat evolution go for you?
Luckily, I had a mentor who kindof helped guide me. And at that
point, I was already in somegroups that in the legal
industry in other industries, wecalled mastermind groups. So
mastermind groups, as everyoneknows, are groups of like minded
(11:16):
people have a similar interest,who like to share. So there are
lots of lawyer groups that aremasterminds. So I started
entering a couple ofmasterminds. And I started
listening and asking questionslike, if you don't want to be
doing your own accounting orQuickBooks, what do you do? So
that's a good example of abusiness task, a major task that
you want to offload. So what doyou do? Do you hire a part time
(11:38):
bookkeeper? Do you hire an inhouse bookkeeper? Do? Do you pay
someone to come in twice a week?
Do you hire a CFO, immediatelychief financial officer? So
that's a good example of abusiness sector of your company
that you may hate. So what doyou do? Do you still do it? Or
how do you offload it, you couldeven do it with a VA virtual
assistant. So that's an exampleof when meeting with a
(11:59):
mastermind you just bounce ideasoff other people. And you find
that a lot of people have solvedthe problem that you're looking
to solve. So to me, it wasn'tabout me figuring it out myself.
It was having the courage andthe knowledge, I guess, to
surround myself with people whoface the same issues. Yeah,
that's great. All right. So somefolks and I and I'm just gonna
(12:23):
pause on the mastermind for aminute because again, whatever
industry someone is in, I havefound that people put up a wall
because they're too afraid to bevulnerable to be open and
honest. Because someone mightcome in and threaten their
business. How have you dealtwith that? What types of
masterminds? Or what solutionshave you come up with?
(12:43):
Well, honestly, one of the firstbooks I read, I think, when I
was young, and one of thevarious life coaches, coaching
courses I had was called Mindsetby Carol Dweck. And that book
talks about the abundancemindset versus the scarcity
mindset. And if you approachlife with fear that someone's
going to steal something, you'rereally limiting yourself in so
many areas of your life. Andfear is a natural response to so
(13:06):
many things. But in thissituation, if you really see
that if you meet with people,that the chances of it coming
back to harm, you are so smallin reality, I mean, I coached
some lawyers in my hometown,that are personal injury lawyers
that are competitors. But I findthat does it come back to haunt
me? Do they take a little bit ofmarket share? I don't know. I
(13:27):
don't care, because I know itcomes back to help me in so many
other areas of my life, thatit's not like I coach all my
competitors. Yeah. And I pickand choose, I am careful, and I
keep my trade secrets. But ingeneral, I'm a pretty
transparent, open, vulnerableguy. And I find that that just
leads to a happier, richer life.
And that book was one of thestarting points for how are you
(13:47):
going to view your life from a,from a scarcity mindset that
everything can go away? Or anabundance mindset, which is the
more you give, the more you get?
Yeah,well, you know, and, you know, I
don't ever mean to besmirchanyone else's character. But
there are a lot of egos in thisparticular industry. And I have
found you to be one of thosepeople who has the sincerity and
(14:09):
this genuine interest to reallykind of make everybody around
you better. And so I do want tosay, I mean, it's been an honor
to work with you and to get toknow you. You give back in so
many ways. Can you can you talkabout Yes. I mean, I really mean
it. Can you talk about a little,you know, of that coaching,
(14:29):
like, what are you coaching themon? Sure,
well, I have some privatecoaching clients, and I only
take about six because I have afew businesses, I'm kind of
busy. But on those particularclients, those are lawyers who
maybe have five to 10 staff,maybe their gross revenues are
two to 5 million and or less,and they're facing problems in
(14:54):
growth or scaling problems thatthey can't scale. So I want to
take a firm of that size andmaybe grow to 50 people, or 40
people, and maybe 10 million inrevenues. So they're facing
business problems that I'vealready been through. And that
it's easy for me to tell themhow I got there and to give them
the tools to get there. And thatmakes me feel really happy to
help some other personal injuryfirm, because in my view,
(15:16):
they're helping their clients.
And one of the things that I'mpassionate about, is helping
people against insurancecompanies. So if I can help a
Lawyer in Virginia, fight theinsurance companies equally to
me, then I'm helping out all ofthat person's clients, and
fulfilling one of my goals inlife. Yeah, that's really great.
Craig and I, you know, I thinklike minded people are often
drawn to each other, I feel avery similar set of philosophies
(15:39):
for my own world, you know, as arestaurant owner, which, you
know, I own a small restaurant,but I have the same philosophy.
I mean, if I can help anotherrestaurant owner to not have the
same issues, I mean, it just,it's a good feeling all around,
it's a win win, I would doanything to help people through
those pitfalls. So yeah,it's just, that's part of who I
(16:03):
am. And so I teach as much as Ican, and I get a lot out of it
personally. And I spend a lot ofmy time helping others and I
some another cool quote I had,or I had heard within the last
year is, the world is a mirror.
So if you give out great stuff,it's going to reflect even
brighter back to you. And Ithought, hey, that's kind of a
(16:25):
trite thing. But it's kind ofcool and kind of makes sense
that the more you give out, thebrighter it shines back. And I
love these little. I love memes.
So that's probably a good meme.
That works as well.
You know, the other one thatmight work for you is the golden
rule, which actually fits yourbranding. Right?
(16:45):
That's a good point. That's veryhelpful.
So um, okay, so we talked alittle bit about coaching and
how you were building I mean,any other milestones between
kind of that 10 year like, Iwant to be a CEO on that side of
the spectrum, to now like anyother big milestones, any other
big things in your groaner?
(17:05):
Actually, I measure some of themilestones by some of the tools
that I began to use. So forinstance, six years ago, or
seven years ago, I got asoftware program for my personal
injury law firm called filevine. And that was one of the
first cloud based softwaresystems for personal injury
attorneys. And because I run myfirm based mostly on data, or
(17:29):
what we call a KPIs, keyperformance indicators. File,
Vine has such a good datagathering section of it, like
the whole thing you can runreports on. So I could all of a
sudden start to run reports oneverything, which is really my
personality, I love data, I lovereporting. So one evolution of
(17:49):
this law firm occurred just six,seven years ago, which was
changing software platforms,which was fine. And then a few
years later, as you know, Istarted to read about Eos, you
know, based on traction, andthat book, and then, you know,
through that came myrelationship with you. So I'd
already had a basis of beingcentered around data. But then
(18:11):
once I started working on an EOS based system, and then hired
Usera, as a coach, we startedgetting a corporate and
accountability structure throughthat book and ELS based
structure that supplemented andcomplemented the already data
based company that I wasrunning. So the marriage of the
(18:32):
data gathering, and the thestructure and accountability
system, those two things, I'dsay, were both monumental leaps
in my ability to have a veryprofitable and very well
functioning company.
Yes, that's great. It's reallygreat. I mean, you know, another
one of the things that thatstrikes me about you is that
(18:54):
you're humble enough to knowthat you don't have all the
answers. And so I feel likeyou're a bit of a Constant
Learner. You know, you you areseeking outside influence
seeking other viewpointsseeking. And you as you well
know, I love traction, I thinkit's, you know, one of the best
books out there for an operatingsystem that we can adopt. So
(19:16):
very aligned with you on that.
And just, again, kudos for, youknow, being willing to keep
learning. Ithink that being a lifelong
learner is part of thatabundance mindset that I
mentioned earlier. Because oneof the reasons people don't want
to keep learning is that of someset of fear, which is they're
scared of change. And they'rescared of breaking something, or
breaking something that seems tobe working in some way. So, you
(19:40):
know, the, the worst phrase inthe corporate mentality is,
that's how we've always done it,right? The worst I think it's
five words, the worst five wordsin a company. That's how we've
always done it. So that phrasedoesn't exist here at my
company, because another coolmeme if it ain't broke, bro. I
get that one. That was from JohnMorgan, who runs a fairly large
(20:02):
law firm. He actually was thefirst guy I heard say that
almost 25 years ago. He probablystole it from somebody. But a
great phrase, If it ain't broke,break it. Because you never want
to just continue a system thatis just That's how we've always
done it. So we encourage peoplehere at my company to always
question why we're doingsomething and see if they can
(20:24):
build a better mousetrap. Soagain, this I think the
foundation really is thatabundance mentality, which leads
you to lifelong learning, andleads you to always be open to
suggestions and changes. And Iam in at least four masterminds
right now. And, and one of themis not even in the legal
industry, it's just crossBusiness Mastermind, so, so even
going outside of the legalindustry, to learn concepts. And
(20:47):
to me, that's fun. I reallyliked learning from really smart
people in other industries andwithin our own industry.
It's really great. It's reallygreat. So now I'm going to kind
of look forward. I mean, whatdoes the future hold for gold
law? What? What do you see ascoming up? Where do you want to
(21:08):
go? That sort of kind of vein,we've got, you know, I have two
offices here in South Florida. iPeople asked, Do you want to be
huge, you know, how big do youwant to be 10 offices, 50
offices. And I asked myself thatquestion a lot. And I've, I am
not an empire builder. So Idon't need more than two offices
(21:28):
unless some opportunity comesup. That makes sense. But so I
say that I have two castles,because I have two offices, I
want to keep polishing those twocastles. So I'm not a big fan of
a third castle, and I don't wantto be all over the country, I
just want to be in Florida, Ireally want to have two offices,
(21:48):
maybe a third someday, if itmakes sense. But I want to keep
polishing my castles and makingthem as perfect as they can be.
So my personal vision is tocontinue to grow in my
geographic area, which isSoutheast Florida. And to keep
perfecting what I have no thatwill come with growth of staff,
(22:10):
we have 80 staff right now about10 lawyers, that will come with
growth. But I think I always saygrowth is the byproduct of
excellence. And to me, that'sbeen true if I focus on quality
first. And excellence, growth isa byproduct of that I do not
want to grow, and then suffer alack of quality but beneath the
growth. So growth is not a goal.
(22:36):
Growth is a result of polishingand excellence. So that's how I
view it a little bit backwardsin some entrepreneurs. Yeah,
no, that's great. And I wouldsay, you know, I think that's
really evident as well, I knowyour team so well. So I can say
this. They also believe in inexcellence. So maybe you could
talk a little bit about theculture and kind of, you know,
(22:57):
the fact that you've built corevalues that everyone buys into.
Andyeah, I also do that backwards.
So a lot of people say growth isthe number one measure of
success. And I would disagree, Isay excellence is one of the
measures of success, whichresults in growth. And the
second thing that results ingrowth is is firm culture. So I
do that one backwards too, whichis that I think if we have
(23:21):
excellence and a great firmculture that those two things
are going to join, leading togrowth. So the first is
excellence. And that's just highquality work product. And the
second is culture. And what Imean by culture is, I have one
sentence Do they like to get upout of bed and come to work in
the morning. And if most or allof my staff enjoy getting out of
(23:42):
bed, if it's not a moan, if it'snot, oh, gosh, I gotta go to
work. If it's this is a pleasantplace, I've chosen to spend my
next eight hours, then that's avictory for me. So what I did
early on is I made what Iconsider to be a quite a smart
hire, which was about 12 yearsago, I hired someone who was in
culture and development atDisney World to run my office.
(24:05):
Now Disney World, as you mayknow, they have the Disney
Disney Academy, they charge over$100,000 to train other
companies in have a great firmculture. Well, I got it for
free. took someone from DisneyWorld who had already been
trained, and I had her comeworking for me. So she started
(24:25):
to implement policies,procedures and systems to make
sure everybody was happy. Today,we've actually divided out HR
from culture, we have a cultureand people team with separate
employees, including her and allthey're responsible for is
employee happiness. We call itemployee happiness and
(24:46):
satisfaction. So we have allthese initiatives, all these
programs that are solelyresponsible for making our
people wake up in the morningand want to come to work. So I'm
lucky that I have enough staffand I'm big enough that I can
have a culture team living, ifyou have three people in your
office three, you can havesomeone devote an hour a week or
(25:06):
half an hour a week to come upwith something that will make
all three people happy. Whetherit's going out for drinks, or
whether it's additional timeoff, or some team building, it
doesn't matter how big you areas a company at all, you can
focus your some of your energyon making sure they like their
jobs.
(25:27):
It's great, really great andvery important. I do agree.
Okay, switching gears for asecond, I just want to ask you a
little bit about marketing,because, you know, you started
with a different name. And acouple years ago, you changed
and I think that's one of themost brilliant things you've
(25:47):
done, in my opinion, but I youknow, was there when you guys
decided so can you talk a littlebit about that, that evolution?
Why? Well,again, not something I came up
with. In many industries,there's the concept of branding,
and most professionalcorporations, whether it's
lawyers, doctors, accountants,on the egos at the top, want
(26:07):
their names on the door. So it'salways Smith Jones and Johnson
are law offices of CraigGoldfarb in my situation. And
that's not sustainable when yougrow as far as branding, and
it's not easy to remember,especially when you add another
partner because then it'd begolden Farben, Smith and golden
Farben, Smith and Frasca, andthen ultimately, it gets
(26:29):
diluted. So your brand issomething that gets diluted if
it includes names. Plus, it'shard for people to remember,
even the good law firms in mytown, they're all peoples names.
But if you figure out a way tobrand, you can brand an idea you
can brand a core value, you canbrand your name, if it's
brandable. Mine happened to bebrandable My name is Goldfarb.
So we changed over to gold law,no gold law can be independent
(26:52):
of me. And now people don't calland expect me they're buying a
brand and a type of service thathas become synonymous in the
community with good legalservice giving back to the
community, etc. So the good lawbrand, with a logo, as you see
on my screensaver has becomesynonymous with the, the way we
want to be looked at in thecommunity. So there's a great
(27:13):
book called Story branding, orthe story brand, which was one
of the evolutions of, of ourbrand is figuring that out
another great book. And that'san example of some reading or
research I do or learning in across industry area. Because
that book has to do with anyindustry. So it talks about the
importance of a brand. Mostdoctors, most lawyers, most
professionals, they don't evenknow what a brand is. So they're
(27:37):
too busy with the ego of theirname. And so that was part of
the evolution of branding ourlaw firm, it came with a jingle,
it came with a logo that yousee. And it comes with all sorts
of elements of brand or lots ofelements, including color,
color, design, music, etc, etc.
I don't suppose you'd sing thejingle for us, which I'm sure
(27:58):
it's pretty easy because it's myphone number, which is also
branded. So I have a phonenumber in five area codes, which
is 2222222. So actually, onenight, as we were starting our
branding, I wanted to know somejingle that had seven notes. So
all I did is I typed into Googleseven note song. And as I saw
(28:21):
the results, I realized that oneof everybody's things they
learned as a little kid was theshave and a haircut two bits,
which goes to tu tu tu tu tu tu.
And so that is actually whatplays at the end of our
commercials and some of oursocial media, which is a
recognizable song from ouryouth, which is was shaven
haircut, two bits. So a lot ofour music is Doot doot Doot
(28:41):
doot, which is now synonymouswith tu tu tu tu tu tu tu. So
again, just mean, you know,having insomnia one night going
on Google came up with our song,would you call that a sonic
brand is a musical brand isaudio. It's called a sonic
brand. So our Sonic branding hasnow come to terms and now on the
on the radio or TV. If you hearthat in my county, you may be
(29:05):
thinking of our law firm.
It's great. It's really great.
And again, just these littleconnections that you're making
with people, their decisionmaking their awareness, you
know, my background, you know,in branding and marketing and
making those connections I thinkis so important. So all right,
well, we talked about kind ofsome of the core components, you
(29:27):
know, do Do you have any thingsthat are keeping you up at
night? I mean, anything that,you know, I or my team or you
know, even just in ourbrainstorm here, I mean, what
what are the big challenges thatyou could use some help with?
Well, Iwould say that since I was a
(29:48):
young lawyer, the biggestchallenge for people who are
lawyers is that they're oftencontrol freaks and it's hard to
delegate. So the skill Oh, thatwas the hardest for me to learn.
Yet the most valuable for me tolearn as an entrepreneur was to
balance the need for controlwith the need for delegation.
(30:09):
And I listened to a couplepodcasts specifically on the
skill of delegation. And there'sa couple that specifically are
great. There's one by Ari MizelAR i, m Eisel. And his podcast
is, I think the art of doingnothing or doing that's what it
is the doing less podcast. Andone of his podcasts is on the
(30:32):
levels of delegation, and howdifficult each of them are. And
he goes through the sixdifferent levels of delegating a
task and examples of each fromhardest from easiest to hardest.
And when I heard that the firsttime was like, like, oh, my
gosh, he's right. He's just madea scientific study of how hard
it is to delegate. And on thatdoing less podcast, I started to
(30:54):
learn and be able to identify,if I just give something to
somebody, and say, Get it done,give it back, that's a level one
delegation, that's really easy.
But when you get to a level six,I'll give you an example of a
level six delegation, hey,marketing director, go get our
website redone. And let me knowwhen it's done. That's a level
(31:14):
six, because I didn't tell themhow much to spend. I didn't tell
him that I want to read anythingor look at the homepage. I
didn't tell him how to do it. Ididn't tell him, pick vendors.
And then I'll go through anddemo all the vendors. I said, Go
get the RIP website redone. Andlet me know when it's done.
That's impossible to do unlessyou've already mastered levels
(31:34):
one through five whosedelegation, you can't, nobody
can do that. Because they wantto be involved in all parts of
redesigning the website. I gotto that point a few years ago,
where I said, Hey, marketingdirector, redo our website, let
me know when it's done. And atthat point, I knew that at least
built the six levels, whether Icomply with that all the time
and stop being a micromanager.
That's certainly hard. But I atleast have mastered the ability
(31:56):
to be able to understand theconcept of a level six Delegated
Task. And to me, that'scontinues to be the hardest
challenge, which is to let goand hire people and gain their
trust enough to be able to do alot of level six delegations.
And once you can do that, acrossyour business, you've really
gotten to a point where youallow yourself some freedom. And
(32:19):
you can take that vacation,that's a month or two. And you
can do some of the things youmight want to do apart from your
company. And that's a point oftotal freedom, which is what we
all say we want when we start abusiness, but nobody really ever
gets there.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a,I would say that's a delegation
I'm, I maybe struggle with toI'll have to listen to the doing
(32:41):
less podcast, because Icertainly don't think I'm at the
level six yet i i can imaginekind of being, you know, a
perfectionist, wanting thosecases, wanting those clients,
you know, really dealt with inthe high quality care that I
know is really important to you.
I mean, that would be verydifficult. So having good
people, which, you know, I thinkthat's, you know, a kind of a
(33:04):
training component of, you know,making sure that they understand
the process. And I would saykind of done in the gold law
way. Has that been somethingthat you feel like the team
daily, bigtime, so we realized early on
that having the right people inthe right seats, and the right
(33:25):
people on your bus, are justabsolutely the one of the most
important thing. So we actuallybecause we are detailed here, we
created an on a hiring,recruiting and onboarding system
that hopefully others can do. Soonce I designed it, I gave it up
to HR and culture. And I said,Okay, now we've designed this
(33:47):
together, now I can let it go.
So I you know, we have, as Isaid, at staff, 10 lawyers, I'm
only involved in the hiringprocess, the final portion of
the hiring process withattorneys, and with C level
employees, meaning a CEO CFOs dowell. So I've taken myself out
(34:07):
of the hiring process, becausewe created a system that
hopefully includes everythingthat we want, and everybody that
works at our company. So havingthe right people and having a
system to make sure you get theright people is just it's the
standard you need to have.
Are you doing any auditing, likewhere you come in, and you just
kind of drop in to see that theprocesses the way you want it
(34:30):
and the people are being, youknow, the clients are being
managed the way you want it? Areyou are you? Yes.
Well, what's interesting is Iaudit, the four people report to
me. So we have an executive teamof five people, including me,
and the only people that thatreport to me or for others. So
the auditing is done in a tieredsystem, which is that so let's
say those four people havesupervisors or managers under
(34:52):
them, who then in turn auditpeople below them below them, so
I only need to see certain data.
So I would never be on Anything,something that's a very low
level data fact, but I have, Ihave about 20 KPIs which I
audit. And within those 20 KPIsare measures of whether systems
are, are working. So if, forinstance, a system is broken, it
(35:14):
will show up in one of the 20KPIs. Makes sense. I don't audit
the systems, I audit the resultsof the systems, which are the
key performance indicators, Idon't have time to audit
systems, I have to audit resultsare seen but below me audit the
systems. Okay.
I mean, that makes sense. I was,you know, in my attempt to think
(35:36):
about this a little morebroadly, I was thinking back to,
you know, maybe my days atGeneral Mills, where, you know,
the organization is so large,you know, the CEO has to trust
that the things made at the yoplay plant, are being done the
right way, in a food safemanner, and with all of the, you
know, safety mechanisms inplace, and certainly the CEO
(35:58):
cannot audit every plant everyday, etc. So, I was sort of
wondering, you know, as you growin this skill to delegate at a
level six, are there otherindustries where safety or
compliance is so critical, andit is kind of navigated through
the chains, I don't know ifthere's anything there. But I
(36:20):
was just thinking to myself, Iwonder if there are folks out
there, almost like a qualityassurance type of manner, that
would even be able to give youmore trust that everything is
being done exactly how you wantit done?
Well, there's, I don't rememberthe book, it might be the four
disciplines of execution, Iforget, that talks about lag
(36:41):
measures and lead measures. So alag measure is a data point that
comes after the occurrence. Sofor instance, with work safety,
if you have zero accidents atyour plant, that's a lag
measure, right comes after thesituation. And a lag measure of
zero incidents, that your planis an audit of sorts, because
it's a KPI that reflects thatyou have good safety systems
(37:03):
going on. So if you have zeroaccidents, probably you have
good systems, or you just gotlucky. If you have 100
accidents, you know that there'ssomething broken in your
systems. So the the good CEOwould be measuring the number
which is zero, not necessarilyauditing the system. And if you
get people involved in, incaring about the systems, that
(37:24):
there may be financiallyincentivized or incentivized in
some other way to have zeroaccidents, then you're putting
some money behind it. And you'realso if they if one of your
passions is work safety, and atthe core value of, you know,
safe, safe environment, if youhave some sort of core value,
that if you hire people thathave the same core values of you
that you do, then work safetymight be something that they're
(37:45):
passionate about, and therefore,it's going to be double likely
that you're going to have veryfew work accidents. So
in that example, Craig, I mean,I don't know what it would be,
but what what in your mind wouldbe a lead metric or a lead
the lead measures are what areyour systems that are in place,
in other words, so lead measure,there's something you do to
(38:06):
prevent workplace accidents,lead measure could be we bought
3200. Jigsaw covers to make surethat our 3200 workers don't get
hurt by the saw that they'reusing in the middle. So that's a
lead measure is that you'vespent money. And it hopefully
will produce a lag measure,which is zero accident. So a
lead measure in that situationwould be a proactive move, a
(38:29):
proactive purchase of saw guardsto prevent injuries. So that
would be a lead measure.
So what would be a lead measurein your business to help with
this accountability, and thisdelegate a lead
measure is the amount we spendon marketing. It doesn't produce
anything yet. So we spent Xmillions of dollars in marketing
in a year that has producednothing. It's merely a lead
(38:53):
measure. So how much are yougoing to spend on marketing? How
many people are you going tohire? What are your salaries?
These are all lead measures.
They haven't produced anythingyet you hope they do. But that
those are lead measures.
On the accountability front,though, I'm wondering for like
you are describing yourchallenge that you continue to
have, you know, in your world isthat level six delegation, so
(39:15):
I'm just trying to think of likelead measures that would allow
you to know,sure, well, the best businesses
then meld at the end of theyear, their lead in their leg.
So for instance, one way Imeasure or I combine and meld a
lead and a lag is if I spent $1million, hypothetically on
marketing, and it produced 100cases, that would be $100 per
case, I think 10,000 Whatever itis per case, you divide a
(39:39):
million by whatever number ofcases I said. So that's called
acquisition cost per case. Sothe way you meld those two
things together, is you figureit out. If you're getting a cost
per product cost per case,that's an effective number. So
that's at the end of the year,whether you figured out whether
your marketing was effective. Soif you have a 1000 cases, and
you settled a million dollars,then that means you got $1,000
(40:03):
per case, I think. So you knowthat your average fee per case
is $1,000. So that's anothermelding at the end of the year.
So there's a purpose for addinglead and lag measures, which is
at the end of the year, youcombine them and figure out
meaningful data based on whatyour lead measures versus what
they produced in lack. And if ifit ends up that you spend money
on TV, and you've got zerocases, well, then from TV, you
(40:24):
know that there's a mismatchbetween your lead and your lag.
And therefore TV is not the bestplace for you to be.
In the example ofaccountability, would you say
kind of like leading measureswould be are we running meetings
effectively? Are we attendingmeetings, are we staying
(40:45):
connected, in which case, I knowyour firm is doing a great job
with that. But that becomes kindof a measurement on the front
end, and then results on theback end? Sure, there's
some lead measures that don'tnecessarily have an ROI or
return on investment. So showingup for meetings, it's tough to
produce a lag measure from that,but but showing up for meetings,
(41:07):
one would say that if everybodyhas the same value system, and
we have accountability as one ofour core values, that it does
result in a unified firm, whichis going to be successful. So
it's hard to put an ROI on justshowing up for meetings. But on
the other hand, you know thatthere are certain corporate
principles and certain things ina corporation, which are
definitely going to lead tosuccess. And if people don't buy
(41:29):
into the principles showing upfor a meeting, you've got
problems you don't have buy in.
Got it. I'm going to keepthinking about this challenge.
Just because I'm, I'm interestedin. And I've never read the book
that you described on the leadand lag measures. But that's
also thefour disciplines of execution is
one of my favorite books that Iread early. And it really
(41:50):
produces produced a lot of goodmetrics and data for how I run
my company. And then another oneby Pat Lencioni. Great Business
author is Five Dysfunctions of aTeam, which talks about trust.
So when you're learning how todelegate, don't only listen to
podcasts, you really got tostudy the concept of trust,
(42:11):
because all of delegation isbased on trust or lack thereof.
And The Five Dysfunctions of aTeam is a wonderful business
book, very well known book thattalks about how you establish
trust before you can be able tocomfortably delegate.
That's great. Really great.
Okay, I have a tangent questionthat is a little bit unrelated
(42:31):
to what we're talking about, butit relates to what you talked
about at the very beginning. So,you know, I, I'm just curious
for women attorneys, you know,this is relating back to what
you said about your mom seeingthe challenges that she was
faced? Do you think that'sgetting any better? Have you
seen a change in that throughthe years?
(42:53):
I have I in a way, I think thethe problem is that the concept
of motherhood still exists, andin a male's head, the risk of
hiring a female and then dealingwith the choice that a female
might ultimately have to makeabout staying home or not that
(43:14):
that risk is still there. And sothat's still in males heads. And
as long as males are stillrunning companies, that hard for
them to remove that from theirheads, if someone might be of
childbearing age. Once you getpast that age, I think that that
stigma is erased for most malesto be candid, because that woman
(43:36):
has already made her choice. SoI think that is the biggest hang
up in our, in our society ofhiring younger females, because
males are still left in the the,the mindset of am I going to
lose this woman to motherhood?
It's interesting. I have acouple of clients around the
country right now that are lawfirms, and they are hiring women
(44:00):
who may have left their lawdegree. And they are fantastic
intake attorneys because it's amore flexible arrangement for
them. And so it's kind of it'skind of fun to see people be
creative with it, but itobviously does create, perhaps
(44:20):
the fear of, you know, losingsomeone the fear of, you know,
kind of having that work. Not bemet by the same person as they
go into becoming a mom.
It's true. It's a part of thereality. But yeah, there are
lots of creative ways I've had,of course, I've had female
attorneys at my company. Butthere's still that stigma, I
(44:44):
guess in our career and in anycareer that is the career itself
as a jealous mistress and thatit'll eat you up and make you
work 70 hours a week if you letit in. That's true whether
you're male or female. Soprofessional services It is a
tough industry to balance withyour family life at all whether
you're female or male,right? Yeah. Well, I'm grateful
(45:05):
for those who have continued tobe creative, obviously, as a
woman. So that's, that's cool.
Well, okay, so anything elsethat you want to ask me or any
other components of yourbusiness that you want to share?
I know you have a mastermindcoming up.
Sure. So for the past sevenyears, I've run a one day
(45:26):
seminar. And it's called theseven figure attorney. And I
named it that because one of myearly goals as a young attorney
was to have a million dollars,which is seven figures in gross
revenue. And that's, that's alot of people's goals. I mean,
that's a lot of money to growseven figures, a million dollars
in fees, or an income at the endof the year. So I remember when
(45:48):
I was young, that was one of myfirst goals. So that's I named
as a seven figure attorney, thewebsite is seven figure
attorney.com, spell out thenumber seven, seven figure
attorney.com. And this year,we're doing it on Thursday,
April 11. In Boston, that's2024. It's a one day seminar.
And it's the only personalinjury seminar I'm aware of
(46:10):
where one law firms being mindbasically opens up all our
techniques and secrets to 100 ormore might be 150 law firms this
year in Boston. And I'm the mainspeaker, I speak four times
about four different topics, alot of them involving what I
talked about today, whether it'scompensation models, KPIs, how
(46:31):
to scale and grow, and all of mytopics apply no matter what size
law firm you are. And then myother speakers, my chief
marketing officer, and hefocuses on how to market for
solo and small firms, and evenmedium firms. And then my other
speakers, the woman I spokeabout earlier from Disney World,
Michelle, who is now our chiefculture officer, so she's C CEO,
(46:53):
at our company chief calledculture officer. So she talks
about the techniques, she's usedto make it, what she calls the
happiest workplace on Earth,playing off the Disney slogan,
you know, the happiest place onearth. So she talks about that.
So it's only three speakers. Andwe have a really awesome guest
speaker this year, a fourthspeaker, which is my wife, and
(47:13):
she's going to come in thisyear, and talk about your
identity as a lawyer andprovider is bullshit. That's
actually the topic of herspeech, because she wants to
tell a cautionary tale ofallowing your business to
swallow up your life, at theexpense of your spouse, and
children. And I've tried toserve that as well as I could, I
(47:34):
failed in some areas, becauseI'm an entrepreneur, but she's
actually going to be veryvulnerable, about me and about
her in in making sure thatyou're aware of the way a
business, even a well runbusiness can take over your life
to the exclusion of your family.
So again, one of the onlyspeakers I know who let someone
(47:55):
get up there and dump all overhim. It's because she's going to
get up there and tell the truth,which is we struggled in some
areas with work life balance.
And I know there's not going tobe a person in the room who does
not struggle with work lifebalance if they went to law
firm. So those are the fourspeakers this year in Boston,
April 11. It's called the sevenfigure attorney, it is only a
(48:16):
one day seminar. And the reasonwe do it on a Thursday is for
work life balance, which isplease bring your spouse or kids
and spend the weekend Friday,Saturday and Sunday in Boston
doing some fun stuff. So wealways pick it on a Thursday,
and we do it in a city that youmay want to go on a vacation to.
That's great. No spring inBoston is great. We've done
Manhattan, we've done Chicago,we've done Atlanta. So we tried
(48:39):
to make it a family friendlyevent and you're only busy one
day, you only busy on Thursday.
So if you bring your family youcan spend Friday, Saturday and
Sunday and whatever day inwhatever city we pick, that's
great. Well, we had talked aboutit. So I'm coming so yeah, I'll
be there. Maybe I'll bring myhusband. Well, we'll see. Have
you reallygood, good idea. If you like the
great city. That's why we pickedit. Well,
(49:02):
Craig, I just I mean, again,from the bottom of my heart, I
mean, thank you for beingwilling to kind of, you know,
first of all, trust me to be apart of your, you know, business
world, your team. I've had sucha it's been such a pleasure to
see your team developed over theyears to be a part of it in a
small way. But really, reallyfun to see you guys grow and
(49:26):
scale and and thank you forbeing on today. Thank you for
being here. Youmust say you've been a lot more
than a small part of our growth.
You've been an instrumental partof our growth in helping helping
me scale and delegate and, andhelp my life become a better
life. And I want to thank youfor that too.
Yeah, well, a lot of people havewritten a lot of great books,
(49:48):
Craig, but I kind of find thatyou have to have a partner to
help it to help you execute itto write and so I love reading I
just like you do and I thinkagain, so many great book books
out there, making it come tolife on a daily basis. Sometimes
it's harder than peopleanticipate. So having a partner
in crime, I've been happy to bethere to just say, remember what
(50:10):
the book said, right?
Well, I think accountability, alot of accountability is based
on a relationship and someoneyou trust, you wouldn't read a
book and then go to war, andprotect your fellow people in
your platoon based on whatyou've read. But you would based
on your relationship with thosefolks. So when I have partners
like you, or other partners thatare people, they go to war with
(50:33):
me, and I go to war with them.
And that's not based on reading.
It's based on my partnership andmy trust.
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thankyou. It's been a been a true
honor. And I think the future isso bright for gold law, in
whatever capacity I think, youknow, It's especially fun to
watch you grow in the, I'm goingto use my fingers. But I really
believe it the right way, rightto make sure your people are
(50:56):
happy and healthy, to make sureyour clients have the quality of
care that they deserve. And towatch you really serve your
community. It's been pretty funto see. So with that, I shall
see you soon, I'm sure butdefinitely in Boston. And thank
you again for joining thepodcast today. Fantastic.
(51:17):
And just send me a bill for thegolden rule. Pointer UK will be
utilizing that in some way inthe next month.
I have to trademark attorney inthe background. trademarking it,
soI just texted somebody that it's
already been done. Sorry. Yeah.
That's good. That's good. Well,have a great rest of the day and
enjoy your 25th anniversary andI will see you and your wife and
(51:40):
your team in Boston.
Thank you so much, Sarah, forhaving me on.
Yes, Craig. Thank you again.
Bye, everyone. Bye bye. Thanksso much for tuning into this
episode of level up yourbusiness with me, Sara Frasca.
If you have a problem in yourbusiness that's keeping you up
at night. Please join us in afuture episode so we can help
get you unstuck. Just clickingthe link in the show notes and
(52:04):
send us a message. Pleaseremember, stay innovative
friends.
You're listening to level upyour business, the podcast where
we talk to hardworking businessowners and leaders and help them
solve real issues in real time.
I'm your host, Sarah Frascarestaurant owner, keynote
speaker and business coach. I'vespent my career not only in
corporate America, but also asan entrepreneur, carrying on my
(00:21):
family's legacy through myrestaurant. Now a business coach
and consultant. I'm helpingother businesses to use creative
problem solving and innovativethinking to drive lasting
change. Stay tuned to hear someinspiring guidance that will
help you to level up yourbusiness. All right, well,
(00:42):
today, I wanted to join in justreally welcome Craig Goldfarb.
Craig, thank you for being apart of our point ne level up
your business podcast.
My pleasure, Sara. Great to behere.
Yeah. And it's good to see you.
I know it hasn't been too long.
Since I've seen you in person.
Where are you calling in fromtoday?
(01:04):
I'm in West Palm Beach, Floridaat my main office operations?
Great.
Great. I know, you go aroundspeaking and stuff. So I wasn't
sure if you are in your officeor on location somewhere else.
So good, good. Well, you know,you and I have known each other
for a while. But I'll just setup for our listeners a little
bit about the podcast. Andhopefully they've joined us on
(01:25):
other episodes. But really, weare trying to get a sense from
business owners, from businessleaders, where they've been, you
know, what has helped them intheir decision making along
their path and in where they aretoday. And then really where
they want to go to in thefuture. And if we can be of help
and ideas today, or you know,I'm the host today, sometimes we
(01:46):
have several of us. But youknow, it would be fun to
brainstorm in the moment withyou if there's an opportunity.
So again, thank you for beinghere. My pleasure. So with that,
you and I are well acquainted.
I've known you for many, manyyears. But can you share with
our viewers and listeners alittle bit about your history?
Why did you decide to become anattorney?
(02:10):
Well, I grew up on the westcoast of Florida. And I had the
wonderful distinction in the1970s of being raised by a
mother who happened to be anattorney. And in the 70s, there
weren't a lot of femaleattorneys. So I had an
interesting role model at myhouse as a very strong and very
smart woman who I discovered atan early age, I was a lot like
(02:31):
her. And as I watched herstruggle and fight as a female,
as a criminal defense attorneyin Clearwater, Florida, I was
really inspired to follow in herfootsteps. And as I grew up, I
realized I was good at debating.
And I liked to have the logicaland analytical part of my brain
being used a lot like my mom. SoI decided to follow in her
(02:54):
footsteps and had a neat, neatjourney along the way. It's
great. It's really great. Haveyou always practiced in Florida?
I have. I went off to college inNorth Carolina, and then came
back to law school at theUniversity of Florida, in
Gainesville, Florida. And then Imoved down to Miami to start my
career when I was about 26 yearsold. Yeah,
(03:16):
that's great. That's wonderful.
And I know you're a dad, a prouddad. So what about your personal
world?
Sure. Well, I'm a father of twogirls, aged 21 and 23. Neither
of them is interested in law,which I'm fine with, would have
been okay either way. The onesin college and ones just out of
college. I've been married for25 years and celebrated my 25th
(03:38):
year anniversary last week. AndI live here in a city called
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,which is about 10 minutes or 15
minutes north of West Palm Beachon the East Coast.
That's great. Andcongratulations on your
anniversary.
Thank you.
That's a huge deal. It is. Yes.
Well. Okay, so you became anattorney? And then how did you
(03:58):
decide you wanted to open yourown practice because of course,
there are many, many differenttypes of, you know, law that you
can practice. And then there'sthe scary component of being an
entrepreneur opening your ownoffice?
Well, I tell a joke, and please,everybody take this as a joke,
that actually slipped my way tothe top. So what I mean by that
(04:19):
course joke is that I dated agirl while I was in law school,
who was getting her master'sdegree in journalism at the
University of Florida, so shewas not in law school. After a
week or two of dating her Irealized her dad was a lawyer.
And that's not why I starteddating her. Didn't even know
really. So as I was going to lawschool, and she was finishing up
getting her master's degree injournalism. We got pretty
(04:40):
serious. And we dated my finalyear of law school at the
University of Florida, and itwas her final year getting her
master's degree. So we gotpretty serious and with my 2.8
GPA in law school, yeah, I didsay at 2.8. I didn't get a lot
of interviews, out of law schoolwith any of the good law firms
because I had such a crappy GPA.
So her father took me to dinnertowards the end of our, my, my
(05:04):
law degree and said, So I heardyou're getting a lot of
interviews. And after I startstopped laughing, he said, Well,
hey, loser. Are you seriousabout my daughter? And I said,
Yeah, I'm serious about yourdaughter. And he said, Why don't
you come to work for me inMiami? And I said, You're a
personal injury lawyer, right?
And he said, Yeah. And I said,Well, I guess since I don't have
(05:25):
any other offers, maybe I'lltake you up on yours. So I
literally did sleep my way tothe top. And that's how I got my
job offer and that I was datingmy girlfriend. And so he hired
me. And the blessing of that wasthat he became a mentor for me,
and taught me when he brought medown to his personal injury firm
in Miami, what I didn't realizewas how lucky I was going to be
(05:48):
because he gave me an education,both in business and in law. And
what was so great about that wasthat he ran a large business.
And he had come from a businessbackground, and a business law
firm, before he started being apersonal injury attorney. So he
knew how to run a business. Buthe also had a good trial law
firm. So he turned me over tohis trial attorneys who taught
(06:10):
me how to be a lawyer. And hementored me, as to how to be a
businessman. So what I say is, Igot a dual degree in law, I got
a business mentorship from myfather in law. And I learned how
to be a trial lawyer in fiveyears. So at the end of those
five years, I could kind ofwrite my ticket, because I knew
how to do both. So I moved up toWest Palm Beach from Miami. In
(06:33):
the meantime, I had married hisdaughter, who was still my wife.
And after working at another lawfirm for a couple of years, in
2002, I decided to go out on myown. And that was about 22 years
ago. And I've never looked back.
So using the mentorship that Iso greatly got from my father in
law, who is still my mentor, andstill one of my best friends. He
(06:53):
taught me that dual degree Imentioned before in business and
law, so that really set me on apath to understanding where my
happiness, or my happy placewas, was it being a lawyer? Was
it being a business person? Orwas it being both, and after
about 10 years, I realized itwas really being a business
person. So that's why I decidedto take the CEO route, instead
(07:15):
of the trial lawyer route, eventhough I had been a trial lawyer
for 10 years. That'san interesting, I mean, I love
how you've set it up. Becausesome owners still want to do the
trial lawyer route, they letsomeone else run their business,
maybe there's a back end CEO orsomeone else, but they don't
(07:38):
necessarily want to get in onthe business side. So tell tell
me a little bit more about thebusiness side. Sure.
One of when I speak about thischoice, I talk about a
continuum. And the continuum onone side is full time CEO, on
the other side is full timelawyer. And there's no wrong
(08:01):
answer for where you are on thatcontinuum, you could be either
on one side or the other, orsomewhere in the middle. And if
one of your favorite things todo is go to court, be in trial,
do depositions, then don't givethat up. But that wasn't my
happy place. I realized after 10years that my happy place was
sitting at my desk, being inmeetings. And I know that sounds
(08:23):
weird. But you know, being inmeetings and running the show,
yeah. So if you are really anentrepreneur, and that's where
you're happy places, make ityour path and your vision to get
there. And that's what I did,starting 15 years ago. And now
I'm there, which is I haven'thandled the case in over 10
years, literally over 10 years,I haven't touched one case. But
that's because that's where Iwant to be, you can surf the
(08:46):
middle of the continuum, youcan, it's just that you need to
surround yourself with peoplewho are on one side or the
other. Because if you're goingto serve right in the middle,
then you're gonna have a lot ofbusiness things to do, but
you're gonna have a lot of casesto work on. So you need to
surround yourself with peoplewho just do the business, and
surround yourself on the otherside with people who just do the
law, right? So you can placeyourself anywhere on that
(09:08):
continuum you want, as long asyou understand you're there. And
then surround yourself on bothsides with people who fill in
the gaps.
I think that's great. I mean, Isee a lot of people struggling,
you know, whether they're in lawor in another type of business
with that really hard kind ofsoul searching of where do I
want to be on this continuum?
And then as they're looking attheir people, you know, perhaps
(09:30):
a leadership team, their trustedadvisors around them, you know,
it's it's hard for them to fitthose people in around them
because as they've grown, theywere doing everything. And so
they start to kind of narrowtheir spectrum and those people
maybe don't fit perfectly aroundthem. I mean, do you see the
(09:54):
same Ido, you have to really know
yourself to know where the gapsare and had a business coach
once who said, Show me yourschedule, and I'll show you your
priorities. So you tend to dothe things that you like doing.
So if your schedule is mostlybusiness stuff, and you're
basically at peace withyourself, it means you really
liked the business. If it'smostly legal stuff, then you
(10:14):
probably are leaning towardsbeing an attorney. So unless
you're forcing your stuff selfto do stuff you hate, take a
look at your schedule, becausethat usually shows where you
have pressed the easy button. Ifyou don't do any business stuff,
it means you don't like it. Thatmeans it just makes sense. So
that's why you don't do anybusiness stuff is because you
don't enjoy it. Maybe need a CO, or even a CEO or a CFO, you
(10:36):
know, the C level staff to comein and run that part of your
show, but you need them. Youcan't run a show just just as an
attorney alone. Yeah,no, I totally agree. Okay, so
you were growing, and you weredeciding kind of at this 10 year
mark, that you wanted to go theCEO route? Can you talk a little
(10:56):
bit about that? I mean, how didthat evolution go for you?
Luckily, I had a mentor who kindof helped guide me. And at that
point, I was already in somegroups that in the legal
industry in other industries, wecalled mastermind groups. So
mastermind groups, as everyoneknows, are groups of like minded
(11:16):
people have a similar interest,who like to share. So there are
lots of lawyer groups that aremasterminds. So I started
entering a couple ofmasterminds. And I started
listening and asking questionslike, if you don't want to be
doing your own accounting orQuickBooks, what do you do? So
that's a good example of abusiness task, a major task that
you want to offload. So what doyou do? Do you hire a part time
(11:38):
bookkeeper? Do you hire an inhouse bookkeeper? Do? Do you pay
someone to come in twice a week?
Do you hire a CFO, immediatelychief financial officer? So
that's a good example of abusiness sector of your company
that you may hate. So what doyou do? Do you still do it? Or
how do you offload it, you couldeven do it with a VA virtual
assistant. So that's an exampleof when meeting with a
(11:59):
mastermind you just bounce ideasoff other people. And you find
that a lot of people have solvedthe problem that you're looking
to solve. So to me, it wasn'tabout me figuring it out myself.
It was having the courage andthe knowledge, I guess, to
surround myself with people whoface the same issues. Yeah,
that's great. All right. So somefolks and I and I'm just gonna
(12:23):
pause on the mastermind for aminute because again, whatever
industry someone is in, I havefound that people put up a wall
because they're too afraid to bevulnerable to be open and
honest. Because someone mightcome in and threaten their
business. How have you dealtwith that? What types of
masterminds? Or what solutionshave you come up with?
(12:43):
Well, honestly, one of the firstbooks I read, I think, when I
was young, and one of thevarious life coaches, coaching
courses I had was called Mindsetby Carol Dweck. And that book
talks about the abundancemindset versus the scarcity
mindset. And if you approachlife with fear that someone's
going to steal something, you'rereally limiting yourself in so
many areas of your life. Andfear is a natural response to so
(13:06):
many things. But in thissituation, if you really see
that if you meet with people,that the chances of it coming
back to harm, you are so smallin reality, I mean, I coached
some lawyers in my hometown,that are personal injury lawyers
that are competitors. But I findthat does it come back to haunt
me? Do they take a little bit ofmarket share? I don't know. I
(13:27):
don't care, because I know itcomes back to help me in so many
other areas of my life, thatit's not like I coach all my
competitors. Yeah. And I pickand choose, I am careful, and I
keep my trade secrets. But ingeneral, I'm a pretty
transparent, open, vulnerableguy. And I find that that just
leads to a happier, richer life.
And that book was one of thestarting points for how are you
(13:47):
going to view your life from a,from a scarcity mindset that
everything can go away? Or anabundance mindset, which is the
more you give, the more you get?
Yeah,well, you know, and, you know, I
don't ever mean to besmirchanyone else's character. But
there are a lot of egos in thisparticular industry. And I have
found you to be one of thosepeople who has the sincerity and
(14:09):
this genuine interest to reallykind of make everybody around
you better. And so I do want tosay, I mean, it's been an honor
to work with you and to get toknow you. You give back in so
many ways. Can you can you talkabout Yes. I mean, I really mean
it. Can you talk about a little,you know, of that coaching,
(14:29):
like, what are you coaching themon? Sure,
well, I have some privatecoaching clients, and I only
take about six because I have afew businesses, I'm kind of
busy. But on those particularclients, those are lawyers who
maybe have five to 10 staff,maybe their gross revenues are
two to 5 million and or less,and they're facing problems in
(14:54):
growth or scaling problems thatthey can't scale. So I want to
take a firm of that size andmaybe grow to 50 people, or 40
people, and maybe 10 million inrevenues. So they're facing
business problems that I'vealready been through. And that
it's easy for me to tell themhow I got there and to give them
the tools to get there. And thatmakes me feel really happy to
help some other personal injuryfirm, because in my view,
(15:16):
they're helping their clients.
And one of the things that I'mpassionate about, is helping
people against insurancecompanies. So if I can help a
Lawyer in Virginia, fight theinsurance companies equally to
me, then I'm helping out all ofthat person's clients, and
fulfilling one of my goals inlife. Yeah, that's really great.
Craig and I, you know, I thinklike minded people are often
drawn to each other, I feel avery similar set of philosophies
(15:39):
for my own world, you know, as arestaurant owner, which, you
know, I own a small restaurant,but I have the same philosophy.
I mean, if I can help anotherrestaurant owner to not have the
same issues, I mean, it just,it's a good feeling all around,
it's a win win, I would doanything to help people through
those pitfalls. So yeah,it's just, that's part of who I
(16:03):
am. And so I teach as much as Ican, and I get a lot out of it
personally. And I spend a lot ofmy time helping others and I
some another cool quote I had,or I had heard within the last
year is, the world is a mirror.
So if you give out great stuff,it's going to reflect even
brighter back to you. And Ithought, hey, that's kind of a
(16:25):
trite thing. But it's kind ofcool and kind of makes sense
that the more you give out, thebrighter it shines back. And I
love these little. I love memes.
So that's probably a good meme.
That works as well.
You know, the other one thatmight work for you is the golden
rule, which actually fits yourbranding. Right?
(16:45):
That's a good point. That's veryhelpful.
So um, okay, so we talked alittle bit about coaching and
how you were building I mean,any other milestones between
kind of that 10 year like, Iwant to be a CEO on that side of
the spectrum, to now like anyother big milestones, any other
big things in your groaner?
(17:05):
Actually, I measure some of themilestones by some of the tools
that I began to use. So forinstance, six years ago, or
seven years ago, I got asoftware program for my personal
injury law firm called filevine. And that was one of the
first cloud based softwaresystems for personal injury
attorneys. And because I run myfirm based mostly on data, or
(17:29):
what we call a KPIs, keyperformance indicators. File,
Vine has such a good datagathering section of it, like
the whole thing you can runreports on. So I could all of a
sudden start to run reports oneverything, which is really my
personality, I love data, I lovereporting. So one evolution of
(17:49):
this law firm occurred just six,seven years ago, which was
changing software platforms,which was fine. And then a few
years later, as you know, Istarted to read about Eos, you
know, based on traction, andthat book, and then, you know,
through that came myrelationship with you. So I'd
already had a basis of beingcentered around data. But then
(18:11):
once I started working on an EOS based system, and then hired
Usera, as a coach, we startedgetting a corporate and
accountability structure throughthat book and ELS based
structure that supplemented andcomplemented the already data
based company that I wasrunning. So the marriage of the
(18:32):
data gathering, and the thestructure and accountability
system, those two things, I'dsay, were both monumental leaps
in my ability to have a veryprofitable and very well
functioning company.
Yes, that's great. It's reallygreat. I mean, you know, another
one of the things that thatstrikes me about you is that
(18:54):
you're humble enough to knowthat you don't have all the
answers. And so I feel likeyou're a bit of a Constant
Learner. You know, you you areseeking outside influence
seeking other viewpointsseeking. And you as you well
know, I love traction, I thinkit's, you know, one of the best
books out there for an operatingsystem that we can adopt. So
(19:16):
very aligned with you on that.
And just, again, kudos for, youknow, being willing to keep
learning. Ithink that being a lifelong
learner is part of thatabundance mindset that I
mentioned earlier. Because oneof the reasons people don't want
to keep learning is that of someset of fear, which is they're
scared of change. And they'rescared of breaking something, or
breaking something that seems tobe working in some way. So, you
(19:40):
know, the, the worst phrase inthe corporate mentality is,
that's how we've always done it,right? The worst I think it's
five words, the worst five wordsin a company. That's how we've
always done it. So that phrasedoesn't exist here at my
company, because another coolmeme if it ain't broke, bro. I
get that one. That was from JohnMorgan, who runs a fairly large
(20:02):
law firm. He actually was thefirst guy I heard say that
almost 25 years ago. He probablystole it from somebody. But a
great phrase, If it ain't broke,break it. Because you never want
to just continue a system thatis just That's how we've always
done it. So we encourage peoplehere at my company to always
question why we're doingsomething and see if they can
(20:24):
build a better mousetrap. Soagain, this I think the
foundation really is thatabundance mentality, which leads
you to lifelong learning, andleads you to always be open to
suggestions and changes. And Iam in at least four masterminds
right now. And, and one of themis not even in the legal
industry, it's just crossBusiness Mastermind, so, so even
going outside of the legalindustry, to learn concepts. And
(20:47):
to me, that's fun. I reallyliked learning from really smart
people in other industries andwithin our own industry.
It's really great. It's reallygreat. So now I'm going to kind
of look forward. I mean, whatdoes the future hold for gold
law? What? What do you see ascoming up? Where do you want to
(21:08):
go? That sort of kind of vein,we've got, you know, I have two
offices here in South Florida. iPeople asked, Do you want to be
huge, you know, how big do youwant to be 10 offices, 50
offices. And I asked myself thatquestion a lot. And I've, I am
not an empire builder. So Idon't need more than two offices
(21:28):
unless some opportunity comesup. That makes sense. But so I
say that I have two castles,because I have two offices, I
want to keep polishing those twocastles. So I'm not a big fan of
a third castle, and I don't wantto be all over the country, I
just want to be in Florida, Ireally want to have two offices,
(21:48):
maybe a third someday, if itmakes sense. But I want to keep
polishing my castles and makingthem as perfect as they can be.
So my personal vision is tocontinue to grow in my
geographic area, which isSoutheast Florida. And to keep
perfecting what I have no thatwill come with growth of staff,
(22:10):
we have 80 staff right now about10 lawyers, that will come with
growth. But I think I always saygrowth is the byproduct of
excellence. And to me, that'sbeen true if I focus on quality
first. And excellence, growth isa byproduct of that I do not
want to grow, and then suffer alack of quality but beneath the
growth. So growth is not a goal.
(22:36):
Growth is a result of polishingand excellence. So that's how I
view it a little bit backwardsin some entrepreneurs. Yeah,
no, that's great. And I wouldsay, you know, I think that's
really evident as well, I knowyour team so well. So I can say
this. They also believe in inexcellence. So maybe you could
talk a little bit about theculture and kind of, you know,
(22:57):
the fact that you've built corevalues that everyone buys into.
Andyeah, I also do that backwards.
So a lot of people say growth isthe number one measure of
success. And I would disagree, Isay excellence is one of the
measures of success, whichresults in growth. And the
second thing that results ingrowth is is firm culture. So I
do that one backwards too, whichis that I think if we have
(23:21):
excellence and a great firmculture that those two things
are going to join, leading togrowth. So the first is
excellence. And that's just highquality work product. And the
second is culture. And what Imean by culture is, I have one
sentence Do they like to get upout of bed and come to work in
the morning. And if most or allof my staff enjoy getting out of
(23:42):
bed, if it's not a moan, if it'snot, oh, gosh, I gotta go to
work. If it's this is a pleasantplace, I've chosen to spend my
next eight hours, then that's avictory for me. So what I did
early on is I made what Iconsider to be a quite a smart
hire, which was about 12 yearsago, I hired someone who was in
culture and development atDisney World to run my office.
(24:05):
Now Disney World, as you mayknow, they have the Disney
Disney Academy, they charge over$100,000 to train other
companies in have a great firmculture. Well, I got it for
free. took someone from DisneyWorld who had already been
trained, and I had her comeworking for me. So she started
(24:25):
to implement policies,procedures and systems to make
sure everybody was happy. Today,we've actually divided out HR
from culture, we have a cultureand people team with separate
employees, including her and allthey're responsible for is
employee happiness. We call itemployee happiness and
(24:46):
satisfaction. So we have allthese initiatives, all these
programs that are solelyresponsible for making our
people wake up in the morningand want to come to work. So I'm
lucky that I have enough staffand I'm big enough that I can
have a culture team living, ifyou have three people in your
office three, you can havesomeone devote an hour a week or
(25:06):
half an hour a week to come upwith something that will make
all three people happy. Whetherit's going out for drinks, or
whether it's additional timeoff, or some team building, it
doesn't matter how big you areas a company at all, you can
focus your some of your energyon making sure they like their
jobs.
(25:27):
It's great, really great andvery important. I do agree.
Okay, switching gears for asecond, I just want to ask you a
little bit about marketing,because, you know, you started
with a different name. And acouple years ago, you changed
and I think that's one of themost brilliant things you've
(25:47):
done, in my opinion, but I youknow, was there when you guys
decided so can you talk a littlebit about that, that evolution?
Why? Well,again, not something I came up
with. In many industries,there's the concept of branding,
and most professionalcorporations, whether it's
lawyers, doctors, accountants,on the egos at the top, want
(26:07):
their names on the door. So it'salways Smith Jones and Johnson
are law offices of CraigGoldfarb in my situation. And
that's not sustainable when yougrow as far as branding, and
it's not easy to remember,especially when you add another
partner because then it'd begolden Farben, Smith and golden
Farben, Smith and Frasca, andthen ultimately, it gets
(26:29):
diluted. So your brand issomething that gets diluted if
it includes names. Plus, it'shard for people to remember,
even the good law firms in mytown, they're all peoples names.
But if you figure out a way tobrand, you can brand an idea you
can brand a core value, you canbrand your name, if it's
brandable. Mine happened to bebrandable My name is Goldfarb.
So we changed over to gold law,no gold law can be independent
(26:52):
of me. And now people don't calland expect me they're buying a
brand and a type of service thathas become synonymous in the
community with good legalservice giving back to the
community, etc. So the good lawbrand, with a logo, as you see
on my screensaver has becomesynonymous with the, the way we
want to be looked at in thecommunity. So there's a great
(27:13):
book called Story branding, orthe story brand, which was one
of the evolutions of, of ourbrand is figuring that out
another great book. And that'san example of some reading or
research I do or learning in across industry area. Because
that book has to do with anyindustry. So it talks about the
importance of a brand. Mostdoctors, most lawyers, most
professionals, they don't evenknow what a brand is. So they're
(27:37):
too busy with the ego of theirname. And so that was part of
the evolution of branding ourlaw firm, it came with a jingle,
it came with a logo that yousee. And it comes with all sorts
of elements of brand or lots ofelements, including color,
color, design, music, etc, etc.
I don't suppose you'd sing thejingle for us, which I'm sure
(27:58):
it's pretty easy because it's myphone number, which is also
branded. So I have a phonenumber in five area codes, which
is 2222222. So actually, onenight, as we were starting our
branding, I wanted to know somejingle that had seven notes. So
all I did is I typed into Googleseven note song. And as I saw
(28:21):
the results, I realized that oneof everybody's things they
learned as a little kid was theshave and a haircut two bits,
which goes to tu tu tu tu tu tu.
And so that is actually whatplays at the end of our
commercials and some of oursocial media, which is a
recognizable song from ouryouth, which is was shaven
haircut, two bits. So a lot ofour music is Doot doot Doot
(28:41):
doot, which is now synonymouswith tu tu tu tu tu tu tu. So
again, just mean, you know,having insomnia one night going
on Google came up with our song,would you call that a sonic
brand is a musical brand isaudio. It's called a sonic
brand. So our Sonic branding hasnow come to terms and now on the
on the radio or TV. If you hearthat in my county, you may be
(29:05):
thinking of our law firm.
It's great. It's really great.
And again, just these littleconnections that you're making
with people, their decisionmaking their awareness, you
know, my background, you know,in branding and marketing and
making those connections I thinkis so important. So all right,
well, we talked about kind ofsome of the core components, you
(29:27):
know, do Do you have any thingsthat are keeping you up at
night? I mean, anything that,you know, I or my team or you
know, even just in ourbrainstorm here, I mean, what
what are the big challenges thatyou could use some help with?
Well, Iwould say that since I was a
(29:48):
young lawyer, the biggestchallenge for people who are
lawyers is that they're oftencontrol freaks and it's hard to
delegate. So the skill Oh, thatwas the hardest for me to learn.
Yet the most valuable for me tolearn as an entrepreneur was to
balance the need for controlwith the need for delegation.
(30:09):
And I listened to a couplepodcasts specifically on the
skill of delegation. And there'sa couple that specifically are
great. There's one by Ari MizelAR i, m Eisel. And his podcast
is, I think the art of doingnothing or doing that's what it
is the doing less podcast. Andone of his podcasts is on the
(30:32):
levels of delegation, and howdifficult each of them are. And
he goes through the sixdifferent levels of delegating a
task and examples of each fromhardest from easiest to hardest.
And when I heard that the firsttime was like, like, oh, my
gosh, he's right. He's just madea scientific study of how hard
it is to delegate. And on thatdoing less podcast, I started to
(30:54):
learn and be able to identify,if I just give something to
somebody, and say, Get it done,give it back, that's a level one
delegation, that's really easy.
But when you get to a level six,I'll give you an example of a
level six delegation, hey,marketing director, go get our
website redone. And let me knowwhen it's done. That's a level
(31:14):
six, because I didn't tell themhow much to spend. I didn't tell
him that I want to read anythingor look at the homepage. I
didn't tell him how to do it. Ididn't tell him, pick vendors.
And then I'll go through anddemo all the vendors. I said, Go
get the RIP website redone. Andlet me know when it's done.
That's impossible to do unlessyou've already mastered levels
(31:34):
one through five whosedelegation, you can't, nobody
can do that. Because they wantto be involved in all parts of
redesigning the website. I gotto that point a few years ago,
where I said, Hey, marketingdirector, redo our website, let
me know when it's done. And atthat point, I knew that at least
built the six levels, whether Icomply with that all the time
and stop being a micromanager.
That's certainly hard. But I atleast have mastered the ability
(31:56):
to be able to understand theconcept of a level six Delegated
Task. And to me, that'scontinues to be the hardest
challenge, which is to let goand hire people and gain their
trust enough to be able to do alot of level six delegations.
And once you can do that, acrossyour business, you've really
gotten to a point where youallow yourself some freedom. And
(32:19):
you can take that vacation,that's a month or two. And you
can do some of the things youmight want to do apart from your
company. And that's a point oftotal freedom, which is what we
all say we want when we start abusiness, but nobody really ever
gets there.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a,I would say that's a delegation
I'm, I maybe struggle with toI'll have to listen to the doing
(32:41):
less podcast, because Icertainly don't think I'm at the
level six yet i i can imaginekind of being, you know, a
perfectionist, wanting thosecases, wanting those clients,
you know, really dealt with inthe high quality care that I
know is really important to you.
I mean, that would be verydifficult. So having good
people, which, you know, I thinkthat's, you know, a kind of a
(33:04):
training component of, you know,making sure that they understand
the process. And I would saykind of done in the gold law
way. Has that been somethingthat you feel like the team
daily, bigtime, so we realized early on
that having the right people inthe right seats, and the right
(33:25):
people on your bus, are justabsolutely the one of the most
important thing. So we actuallybecause we are detailed here, we
created an on a hiring,recruiting and onboarding system
that hopefully others can do. Soonce I designed it, I gave it up
to HR and culture. And I said,Okay, now we've designed this
(33:47):
together, now I can let it go.
So I you know, we have, as Isaid, at staff, 10 lawyers, I'm
only involved in the hiringprocess, the final portion of
the hiring process withattorneys, and with C level
employees, meaning a CEO CFOs dowell. So I've taken myself out
(34:07):
of the hiring process, becausewe created a system that
hopefully includes everythingthat we want, and everybody that
works at our company. So havingthe right people and having a
system to make sure you get theright people is just it's the
standard you need to have.
Are you doing any auditing, likewhere you come in, and you just
kind of drop in to see that theprocesses the way you want it
(34:30):
and the people are being, youknow, the clients are being
managed the way you want it? Areyou are you? Yes.
Well, what's interesting is Iaudit, the four people report to
me. So we have an executive teamof five people, including me,
and the only people that thatreport to me or for others. So
the auditing is done in a tieredsystem, which is that so let's
say those four people havesupervisors or managers under
(34:52):
them, who then in turn auditpeople below them below them, so
I only need to see certain data.
So I would never be on Anything,something that's a very low
level data fact, but I have, Ihave about 20 KPIs which I
audit. And within those 20 KPIsare measures of whether systems
are, are working. So if, forinstance, a system is broken, it
(35:14):
will show up in one of the 20KPIs. Makes sense. I don't audit
the systems, I audit the resultsof the systems, which are the
key performance indicators, Idon't have time to audit
systems, I have to audit resultsare seen but below me audit the
systems. Okay.
I mean, that makes sense. I was,you know, in my attempt to think
(35:36):
about this a little morebroadly, I was thinking back to,
you know, maybe my days atGeneral Mills, where, you know,
the organization is so large,you know, the CEO has to trust
that the things made at the yoplay plant, are being done the
right way, in a food safemanner, and with all of the, you
know, safety mechanisms inplace, and certainly the CEO
(35:58):
cannot audit every plant everyday, etc. So, I was sort of
wondering, you know, as you growin this skill to delegate at a
level six, are there otherindustries where safety or
compliance is so critical, andit is kind of navigated through
the chains, I don't know ifthere's anything there. But I
(36:20):
was just thinking to myself, Iwonder if there are folks out
there, almost like a qualityassurance type of manner, that
would even be able to give youmore trust that everything is
being done exactly how you wantit done?
Well, there's, I don't rememberthe book, it might be the four
disciplines of execution, Iforget, that talks about lag
(36:41):
measures and lead measures. So alag measure is a data point that
comes after the occurrence. Sofor instance, with work safety,
if you have zero accidents atyour plant, that's a lag
measure, right comes after thesituation. And a lag measure of
zero incidents, that your planis an audit of sorts, because
it's a KPI that reflects thatyou have good safety systems
(37:03):
going on. So if you have zeroaccidents, probably you have
good systems, or you just gotlucky. If you have 100
accidents, you know that there'ssomething broken in your
systems. So the the good CEOwould be measuring the number
which is zero, not necessarilyauditing the system. And if you
get people involved in, incaring about the systems, that
(37:24):
there may be financiallyincentivized or incentivized in
some other way to have zeroaccidents, then you're putting
some money behind it. And you'realso if they if one of your
passions is work safety, and atthe core value of, you know,
safe, safe environment, if youhave some sort of core value,
that if you hire people thathave the same core values of you
that you do, then work safetymight be something that they're
(37:45):
passionate about, and therefore,it's going to be double likely
that you're going to have veryfew work accidents. So
in that example, Craig, I mean,I don't know what it would be,
but what what in your mind wouldbe a lead metric or a lead
the lead measures are what areyour systems that are in place,
in other words, so lead measure,there's something you do to
(38:06):
prevent workplace accidents,lead measure could be we bought
3200. Jigsaw covers to make surethat our 3200 workers don't get
hurt by the saw that they'reusing in the middle. So that's a
lead measure is that you'vespent money. And it hopefully
will produce a lag measure,which is zero accident. So a
lead measure in that situationwould be a proactive move, a
(38:29):
proactive purchase of saw guardsto prevent injuries. So that
would be a lead measure.
So what would be a lead measurein your business to help with
this accountability, and thisdelegate a lead
measure is the amount we spendon marketing. It doesn't produce
anything yet. So we spent Xmillions of dollars in marketing
in a year that has producednothing. It's merely a lead
(38:53):
measure. So how much are yougoing to spend on marketing? How
many people are you going tohire? What are your salaries?
These are all lead measures.
They haven't produced anythingyet you hope they do. But that
those are lead measures.
On the accountability front,though, I'm wondering for like
you are describing yourchallenge that you continue to
have, you know, in your world isthat level six delegation, so
(39:15):
I'm just trying to think of likelead measures that would allow
you to know,sure, well, the best businesses
then meld at the end of theyear, their lead in their leg.
So for instance, one way Imeasure or I combine and meld a
lead and a lag is if I spent $1million, hypothetically on
marketing, and it produced 100cases, that would be $100 per
case, I think 10,000 Whatever itis per case, you divide a
(39:39):
million by whatever number ofcases I said. So that's called
acquisition cost per case. Sothe way you meld those two
things together, is you figureit out. If you're getting a cost
per product cost per case,that's an effective number. So
that's at the end of the year,whether you figured out whether
your marketing was effective. Soif you have a 1000 cases, and
you settled a million dollars,then that means you got $1,000
(40:03):
per case, I think. So you knowthat your average fee per case
is $1,000. So that's anothermelding at the end of the year.
So there's a purpose for addinglead and lag measures, which is
at the end of the year, youcombine them and figure out
meaningful data based on whatyour lead measures versus what
they produced in lack. And if ifit ends up that you spend money
on TV, and you've got zerocases, well, then from TV, you
(40:24):
know that there's a mismatchbetween your lead and your lag.
And therefore TV is not the bestplace for you to be.
In the example ofaccountability, would you say
kind of like leading measureswould be are we running meetings
effectively? Are we attendingmeetings, are we staying
(40:45):
connected, in which case, I knowyour firm is doing a great job
with that. But that becomes kindof a measurement on the front
end, and then results on theback end? Sure, there's
some lead measures that don'tnecessarily have an ROI or
return on investment. So showingup for meetings, it's tough to
produce a lag measure from that,but but showing up for meetings,
(41:07):
one would say that if everybodyhas the same value system, and
we have accountability as one ofour core values, that it does
result in a unified firm, whichis going to be successful. So
it's hard to put an ROI on justshowing up for meetings. But on
the other hand, you know thatthere are certain corporate
principles and certain things ina corporation, which are
definitely going to lead tosuccess. And if people don't buy
(41:29):
into the principles showing upfor a meeting, you've got
problems you don't have buy in.
Got it. I'm going to keepthinking about this challenge.
Just because I'm, I'm interestedin. And I've never read the book
that you described on the leadand lag measures. But that's
also thefour disciplines of execution is
one of my favorite books that Iread early. And it really
(41:50):
produces produced a lot of goodmetrics and data for how I run
my company. And then another oneby Pat Lencioni. Great Business
author is Five Dysfunctions of aTeam, which talks about trust.
So when you're learning how todelegate, don't only listen to
podcasts, you really got tostudy the concept of trust,
(42:11):
because all of delegation isbased on trust or lack thereof.
And The Five Dysfunctions of aTeam is a wonderful business
book, very well known book thattalks about how you establish
trust before you can be able tocomfortably delegate.
That's great. Really great.
Okay, I have a tangent questionthat is a little bit unrelated
(42:31):
to what we're talking about, butit relates to what you talked
about at the very beginning. So,you know, I, I'm just curious
for women attorneys, you know,this is relating back to what
you said about your mom seeingthe challenges that she was
faced? Do you think that'sgetting any better? Have you
seen a change in that throughthe years?
(42:53):
I have I in a way, I think thethe problem is that the concept
of motherhood still exists, andin a male's head, the risk of
hiring a female and then dealingwith the choice that a female
might ultimately have to makeabout staying home or not that
(43:14):
that risk is still there. And sothat's still in males heads. And
as long as males are stillrunning companies, that hard for
them to remove that from theirheads, if someone might be of
childbearing age. Once you getpast that age, I think that that
stigma is erased for most malesto be candid, because that woman
(43:36):
has already made her choice. SoI think that is the biggest hang
up in our, in our society ofhiring younger females, because
males are still left in the the,the mindset of am I going to
lose this woman to motherhood?
It's interesting. I have acouple of clients around the
country right now that are lawfirms, and they are hiring women
(44:00):
who may have left their lawdegree. And they are fantastic
intake attorneys because it's amore flexible arrangement for
them. And so it's kind of it'skind of fun to see people be
creative with it, but itobviously does create, perhaps
(44:20):
the fear of, you know, losingsomeone the fear of, you know,
kind of having that work. Not bemet by the same person as they
go into becoming a mom.
It's true. It's a part of thereality. But yeah, there are
lots of creative ways I've had,of course, I've had female
attorneys at my company. Butthere's still that stigma, I
(44:44):
guess in our career and in anycareer that is the career itself
as a jealous mistress and thatit'll eat you up and make you
work 70 hours a week if you letit in. That's true whether
you're male or female. Soprofessional services It is a
tough industry to balance withyour family life at all whether
you're female or male,right? Yeah. Well, I'm grateful
(45:05):
for those who have continued tobe creative, obviously, as a
woman. So that's, that's cool.
Well, okay, so anything elsethat you want to ask me or any
other components of yourbusiness that you want to share?
I know you have a mastermindcoming up.
Sure. So for the past sevenyears, I've run a one day
(45:26):
seminar. And it's called theseven figure attorney. And I
named it that because one of myearly goals as a young attorney
was to have a million dollars,which is seven figures in gross
revenue. And that's, that's alot of people's goals. I mean,
that's a lot of money to growseven figures, a million dollars
in fees, or an income at the endof the year. So I remember when
(45:48):
I was young, that was one of myfirst goals. So that's I named
as a seven figure attorney, thewebsite is seven figure
attorney.com, spell out thenumber seven, seven figure
attorney.com. And this year,we're doing it on Thursday,
April 11. In Boston, that's2024. It's a one day seminar.
And it's the only personalinjury seminar I'm aware of
(46:10):
where one law firms being mindbasically opens up all our
techniques and secrets to 100 ormore might be 150 law firms this
year in Boston. And I'm the mainspeaker, I speak four times
about four different topics, alot of them involving what I
talked about today, whether it'scompensation models, KPIs, how
(46:31):
to scale and grow, and all of mytopics apply no matter what size
law firm you are. And then myother speakers, my chief
marketing officer, and hefocuses on how to market for
solo and small firms, and evenmedium firms. And then my other
speakers, the woman I spokeabout earlier from Disney World,
Michelle, who is now our chiefculture officer, so she's C CEO,
(46:53):
at our company chief calledculture officer. So she talks
about the techniques, she's usedto make it, what she calls the
happiest workplace on Earth,playing off the Disney slogan,
you know, the happiest place onearth. So she talks about that.
So it's only three speakers. Andwe have a really awesome guest
speaker this year, a fourthspeaker, which is my wife, and
(47:13):
she's going to come in thisyear, and talk about your
identity as a lawyer andprovider is bullshit. That's
actually the topic of herspeech, because she wants to
tell a cautionary tale ofallowing your business to
swallow up your life, at theexpense of your spouse, and
children. And I've tried toserve that as well as I could, I
(47:34):
failed in some areas, becauseI'm an entrepreneur, but she's
actually going to be veryvulnerable, about me and about
her in in making sure thatyou're aware of the way a
business, even a well runbusiness can take over your life
to the exclusion of your family.
So again, one of the onlyspeakers I know who let someone
(47:55):
get up there and dump all overhim. It's because she's going to
get up there and tell the truth,which is we struggled in some
areas with work life balance.
And I know there's not going tobe a person in the room who does
not struggle with work lifebalance if they went to law
firm. So those are the fourspeakers this year in Boston,
April 11. It's called the sevenfigure attorney, it is only a
(48:16):
one day seminar. And the reasonwe do it on a Thursday is for
work life balance, which isplease bring your spouse or kids
and spend the weekend Friday,Saturday and Sunday in Boston
doing some fun stuff. So wealways pick it on a Thursday,
and we do it in a city that youmay want to go on a vacation to.
That's great. No spring inBoston is great. We've done
Manhattan, we've done Chicago,we've done Atlanta. So we tried
(48:39):
to make it a family friendlyevent and you're only busy one
day, you only busy on Thursday.
So if you bring your family youcan spend Friday, Saturday and
Sunday and whatever day inwhatever city we pick, that's
great. Well, we had talked aboutit. So I'm coming so yeah, I'll
be there. Maybe I'll bring myhusband. Well, we'll see. Have
you reallygood, good idea. If you like the
great city. That's why we pickedit. Well,
(49:02):
Craig, I just I mean, again,from the bottom of my heart, I
mean, thank you for beingwilling to kind of, you know,
first of all, trust me to be apart of your, you know, business
world, your team. I've had sucha it's been such a pleasure to
see your team developed over theyears to be a part of it in a
small way. But really, reallyfun to see you guys grow and
(49:26):
scale and and thank you forbeing on today. Thank you for
being here. Youmust say you've been a lot more
than a small part of our growth.
You've been an instrumental partof our growth in helping helping
me scale and delegate and, andhelp my life become a better
life. And I want to thank youfor that too.
Yeah, well, a lot of people havewritten a lot of great books,
(49:48):
Craig, but I kind of find thatyou have to have a partner to
help it to help you execute itto write and so I love reading I
just like you do and I thinkagain, so many great book books
out there, making it come tolife on a daily basis. Sometimes
it's harder than peopleanticipate. So having a partner
in crime, I've been happy to bethere to just say, remember what
(50:10):
the book said, right?
Well, I think accountability, alot of accountability is based
on a relationship and someoneyou trust, you wouldn't read a
book and then go to war, andprotect your fellow people in
your platoon based on whatyou've read. But you would based
on your relationship with thosefolks. So when I have partners
like you, or other partners thatare people, they go to war with
(50:33):
me, and I go to war with them.
And that's not based on reading.
It's based on my partnership andmy trust.
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thankyou. It's been a been a true
honor. And I think the future isso bright for gold law, in
whatever capacity I think, youknow, It's especially fun to
watch you grow in the, I'm goingto use my fingers. But I really
believe it the right way, rightto make sure your people are
(50:56):
happy and healthy, to make sureyour clients have the quality of
care that they deserve. And towatch you really serve your
community. It's been pretty funto see. So with that, I shall
see you soon, I'm sure butdefinitely in Boston. And thank
you again for joining thepodcast today. Fantastic.
(51:17):
And just send me a bill for thegolden rule. Pointer UK will be
utilizing that in some way inthe next month.
I have to trademark attorney inthe background. trademarking it,
soI just texted somebody that it's
already been done. Sorry. Yeah.
That's good. That's good. Well,have a great rest of the day and
enjoy your 25th anniversary andI will see you and your wife and
(51:40):
your team in Boston.
Thank you so much, Sarah, forhaving me on.
Yes, Craig. Thank you again.
Bye, everyone. Bye bye. Thanksso much for tuning into this
episode of level up yourbusiness with me, Sara Frasca.
If you have a problem in yourbusiness that's keeping you up
at night. Please join us in afuture episode so we can help
get you unstuck. Just clickingthe link in the show notes and
(52:04):
send us a message. Pleaseremember, stay innovative
friends.
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