October 14, 2024 • 48 mins
RJon Robins is the Co-Founder of How To Manage A Small Law Firm.
RJon Robins is an 8-figure entrepreneur, licensed attorney, and bestselling author. He founded How To Manage A Small Law Firm at his kitchen table while flat broke in 2009; he has since achieved 8,000% revenue growth and now has over 600 of the fastest-growing small law firm owners in the country as members.
Operating in multiple countries, RJon works in the business about 90 days a year and spends the other 170 workdays launching new and profitable business ventures. He speaks to thousands of law firm owners annually, helping them define the meaning of profit and break free from the mindset that they need to suffer to build a profitable business.
Connect with RJon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjonrobins/
Visit How To Manage A Small Law Firm: https://howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com/
RJon’s Book: Profit First For Lawyers: Transform Your Law Firm from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine
RJon’s Podcast: Profit First for Lawyers
On This Episode, We Discuss…
RJon Robins is an 8-figure entrepreneur, licensed attorney, and bestselling author. He founded How To Manage A Small Law Firm at his kitchen table while flat broke in 2009; he has since achieved 8,000% revenue growth and now has over 600 of the fastest-growing small law firm owners in the country as members.
Operating in multiple countries, RJon works in the business about 90 days a year and spends the other 170 workdays launching new and profitable business ventures. He speaks to thousands of law firm owners annually, helping them define the meaning of profit and break free from the mindset that they need to suffer to build a profitable business.
Connect with RJon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjonrobins/
Visit How To Manage A Small Law Firm: https://howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com/
RJon’s Book: Profit First For Lawyers: Transform Your Law Firm from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine
RJon’s Podcast: Profit First for Lawyers
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- How to Stop Running Your Firm and Start Owning It
- The Seven Main Components of Every Successful Law Firm
- Why CPA Advice Might be Costing You More Than You Think
- How to Increase Your Law Firm’s Profitability Without Increasing Overhead
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your law firm is not your baby. Your law firm
is your mule. It's there to pull your plow so
you can feed your family and live a great life.
You're not supposed to be taking pride and how much
you suffer and how much you sacrifice, and how much
you can endure and how much you can do without.
You're supposed to be taking pride and how much value
your business provides to your clients. And you're supposed to
(00:23):
be taking pride in how smart you are about delivering
that value in a way that's efficient and profitable for you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric BERSONO, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts in the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me R. John Robbins, who is
the owner and CEO of How to Manage a Small
Law Firm. Our John, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Eric, So I feel like this could be an extended
version podcast. You know, I personally went through your background,
your website. You were nice enough to send me a
copy of your new book, which I was able to
glean over. But if you could give our audience a
little bit of background on who you are and what
(01:26):
you're doing now so they have an idea of your
experience and how it can help them.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Before I do that, could I ask that we give
your audience a commitment or a promise about what value
we're going to deliver, because probably I'm guessing they don't
really care who I am or my background, or my
credentials or my experience. If I can't help them, who cares?
And if I can help them, maybe then they want
(01:55):
to learn more about me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, let's talk about how you can make a law
firm more profit football. That's really the section. As like
I said, I got the book a couple of days
ago and was skimming through it and was really just
starting to get into the meat of how to make
a law firm more profitable. So let's start with that guarantee.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, I'll show your audience how to make their
law firm at least ten percent more profitable without any
fancy technology, without hiring more staff, without really having to
make any kind of a big investment just by taking
(02:34):
advantage of the tools and resources that they probably have
already at their disposal.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sound good, sounds perfect, all right?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Now, I got to think about there's so many different
Now we're talking about a three hour podcast because there's
so many different ways to do it. Here. Look, look,
the way that we double the revenues of a law
firm is not with one giant, grand gesture. The way
that we double the revenues of a law firm is
one brick at a time. Right, That's how you build
a solid, sustainable law firm business that gives you predictable revenue,
(03:12):
predictable profits that can work for you while you're gone
for thirty you know, thirty days at a time with
emergency access only is really what we aim for with
most of our members. So you know, the goal is
to transform the practice that you have to work for
into a business that works for you so that you
can have a life. And we just use thirty days
(03:36):
as a pretty good test because I think that's that's
probably a big improvement in the quality of life for
most law firm owners when they can get their business,
When they get their business to the point where it
can we're each of the seven main parts of their
business keeps working for them even while they're away. So
while you're gone for thirty consecutive days with emergency access only,
(03:57):
you want the marketing to keep working for you consistently, predictably, reliably,
and profitably. While you're away. You want the sales process,
the sales mechanism, the intake, the meeting with the prospective
new clients, the following up with the prospective new clients
to keep happening consistently, predictably, reliably while you're away for
(04:19):
thirty days with emergency access only. And by the way,
it should not be a lawyer doing the sales. If
you have a lawyer doing the sales, that's an easy
way to increase the revenues of the law firm by
a lot more than ten percent while they're away for
thirty days with emergency access only. The goal is that
the operations keep functioning. So there's seven main parts of
every successful law firm and seven main parts of every
(04:42):
struggling law firm. Marketing, sales, production, people, physical plan, financial controls,
and the biggest part, the biggest challenge, The biggest issue
is the mindset of the owner. Right to help to
make the law firm serve the owner financially, serve the
owner personally, serve the owner professionally. So that's kind of
like what we aim for in how to bang a
small law Firm.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, and i'd like to just you know, part of
the thing that I pulled out from your website and
your book is that mindset piece I think is really
important and we should start there. So anybody listening to this,
it's you know, this is two tricks that you can
do to your law firm to make more money, is
not what we're talking about. You developed an acronym that
(05:24):
is take all your excuses and shove them up your beep,
which to me is saying that's something that your people
need to take ownership, and the way that you've always
done them doesn't mean that that's the right way to
do them now. So when you talk about changing an
attorney's mindset, what are some of the tougher jobs that
you have is taking that mindset from where it is
(05:46):
currently to reshaping it into something that understands this new system.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right, So you got to keep in mind, I've been
doing this since nineteen ninety nine, right, I started at
the Florida Bar at the Law Office Management Assistant service
as a small law firm management advisor with Lomas back
in nineteen ninety nine. This is all I've been doing
for twenty five years, right, and I've worked with thousands
(06:12):
and thousands and thousands and thousands of law firms. I
spent three years working with mid sized firms, you know,
fifteen twenty five fifty lawyer firms, but most of my
career has been in the under ten million dollar, under
twenty million dollar, under ten million dollar firm range. So
(06:33):
the five hundred law firms that we managed today, I
mentioned to you earlier that half of them are under
five million dollars in revenue, right, Probably half of them
are under one million dollars in revenue. We've got firms
up to thirty million, but the majority of them are
the five hundred to five hundred thousand and five million
dollar range. Is kind of our sweet spot and the
(06:55):
biggest challenge, the biggest, biggest, biggest challenge is to really
get the owner of the law firm to think of
the law firm as a business, which is a separate
entity from themselves. Right, Your law firm isn't your baby right,
(07:18):
you don't. I mean, like, what wouldn't you do for
your kids? There's probably nothing you wouldn't do for your kids, right.
You'd suffer, you'd sacrifice, you'd do without, you'd work crazy hours,
you do all kinds of heroics for your kids. Your
law firm is supposed to work for you. You're not supposed
to have to suffer and sacrifice and do without. You
(07:42):
might be willing to do that for a short time
because you expect to return on that investment. But changing
the nature of the relationship between the owner of the
law firm and the law firm itself is the big hurdle.
That's the big mindset shift that that we've got to
work on first. Once the owner of a law firm
(08:06):
starts thinking of the law firm as a business that
exists to serve their needs as opposed to taking pride
in how much they suffer and how much they sacrifice
and how much they can serve the law firm, the
rest is pretty mechanical. Look, law firms are very simple
businesses to run. And I understand that this is going
(08:28):
to break the hearts of some of your listeners and
probably piss off a lot of your listeners, and believe me,
I've got a little fan club that's been following me
around for twenty years who really get upset about this truth? Right?
The truth is, law firms are very simple businesses to run.
I've already mentioned the seven main parts of every successful
(08:50):
law firm and every unsuccessful law firm. Marketing leads to sales.
Sales leads to production. Production requires people. People need things.
That's physical plant. You got to use financial controls to
make sure you're navigating and doing things the right way.
And it's all in service of your goals of the owner,
(09:10):
your financial goals, your personal goals, your professional goals. Compared
to like any other business you can probably imagine, law
firms have fewer moving parts. They're more simple to run,
they require less working capital to grow. They present a
much lower risk profile to the owner than a restaurant,
(09:32):
than an HVAC company, than a moving company. I mean,
almost any kind of a business you can think of
is harder to run than a law firm. So you
don't have to do very much to transform the performance
of a law firm, which really pisss off a lot
of struggling law firm owners because wow, you know all
(09:54):
this time, I thought that this was such a complicated business,
and that's why I'm struggling so much. Right, And you
take that excuse away, and what you're left with is
the reason that your law firm isn't performing financially the
way you want it to perform is very simple, Right.
It's because you're not causing the marketing to be done
(10:17):
the right way, because you're not causing the sales conversion
process to be done the right way, because you didn't
take the time to think through and document the processes
and the systems and the procedures for how the work's
supposed to get produced. Imagine a restaurant being run by
the world's greatest chef, right, but with no written recipes,
(10:40):
with no written instructions for how the kitchen staff is
supposed to do anything right, with no training or onboarding
or standards or the front of house for how they're
supposed to run, I mean, the restaurant would run badly. Well,
it's the same thing in a law firm. The point
of making is you just get the marketing into alignment
(11:03):
with the sales. You get the sales into alignment with
the production. You get the alignment that You get the
people trained up on the processes and the systems and
the procedures for the production, and you give them the
tools and the resources they need, which is part of
the physical plant. And you put some pretty basic financial
controls in place. It doesn't require highly sophisticated financial controls
(11:24):
to run a ten fifty million dollars law firm. Pretty
simple stuff. It's gonna work. But then, what are my excuses? Right?
What the excuses are? You got to just do it.
That's why the acronym is take all your excuses and
shove them up your your It's tay A Studia t
(11:48):
A y e A s t u Ya, which by
the way, is my son's name. Also, his name is
tay A Studio. And he'll tell you straight to your
face exactly what it means.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yep. I saw that in your bio as well, which
is one of the reasons I wanted to bring up
that it shows your commitment to this. Of all the
things you just said, one of the things I really
want to drill down on is the financial taking ownership
of the financials. Now, I was at the part in
your book where you were mentioning CPAs and you have
a specific. You have a specific opinion on CPAs, and
(12:23):
I'd love you to kind of explain that and why
that is because I was in the same mindset I
think that a lot of your clients are. When I
was like, well, what's wrong with the CPA? I don't
get it, And then after getting through that chapter, I
was like, ah, now it opens my mind, which I
think is the first key to unlocking a little bit
more profitability.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Well, that's one of the keys to unlocking a lot
more profitability. Not just a little, it's a lot. It's like,
look a million dollar house. Right, Let's say you buy
a million dollar house, and let's just say, to make
(13:04):
the math easy, with no down payment, it's going to
cost you roughly five thousand dollars a month principal, interest,
taxes and insurance. Yeah, maybe you got some HOA or
some something like that. You know, five six thousand dollars
a month. What if you could have a free million
dollar house? Would you like a free million dollar house,
a one million dollar house for free? I think most people,
(13:26):
I think most people would wouldn't mind that. Right. That's
how much your CPA is probably costing you. They're basically
flushing a million dollar house down the toilet on you
because of how they operate. So I got to give
(13:47):
a little context for this. Right, So, my undergraduate degree
is in Communications, Law, Economics, and Government from the American
University in Washington, DC. I don't have a business degree.
I don't have a finance degree. I don't have an MBA,
I don't have a CPA behind my name. I just
went to law school. Right. My business has been in
(14:09):
the ink five thousand every year as one of the
five thousand fastest growing companies in the country for nine
years in a row. Last year we grossed over thirty
million dollars. I created more million and multimillion dollar law
firms than anyone else on the planet, and no one
even pretends to have done more than me, for no
other reason than the fact that I've been doing it
longer than anyone else. And what I'm telling you is
(14:31):
is from the school of hard knocks. Right, because my CPA,
my former CPA, wasted a million dollar house for me. Right,
I've lost millions and millions of dollars before I figured
this stuff out. And I'm sharing that because I think
there's a lot of embarrassment that goes into facing up
(14:53):
to the issues that I talk about in the book
Profit First for Lawyers, And that's really why I wrote
the book. You know, the book Profit First for Lawyers
doesn't teach how to implement profit first, by the way.
It's designed to give the law firm owner the tools
and the arguments and the evidence and the ammunition to
(15:16):
advocate for themselves for why you should implement profit first
in your law firm. Because the minute you pick up
Profit First by Mike mccallois, which you should definitely read
and listen to the audio. The audio is even better
than the book, by the way, because he performs it himself.
And the guy in the audio of the Profit First
for Lawyers audiobook is the same guy who sat on
(15:38):
my kitchen table. He is very authentic. It's really funny. Anyway.
The point making is he asked me to write the
book because over and over and over again lawyers would
come back and say, well, my accountant or my CPA
or my bookkeeper told me that profit first won't work
for a law firm which is complete and utter bs.
(16:00):
So here's the deal. The P in CPA stands for public.
We all know that right now, lawyers, we all and
I'm a lawyer too. We all took an oath of attorney,
and the ethical rules that we are all bound by
as attorneys is to be a zealous advocate for our
(16:24):
client against the world right. It's us protecting our client
against the world right. You can tell us where you
buried the body, and we can't tell anyone where you
buried the body. You can give us the bloody knife
and the smoking gun, and we are literally not allowed
to tell anyone what you told us on pain of
(16:45):
getting disbarred. Yeah, and so this is so drilled into us,
this is so ingrained in us as lawyers that we
tend to assume that it's the same for CPAs, but
it's not. Accountants. CPAs actually take the oath of CPA,
(17:07):
and the oath of CPA says that the CPA owes
a duty to the public. The CPA owes a duty.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Of loyalty to the public. The CPA, your CPA, who
you're paying. They owe a duty to your creditors.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Your CPA owes a duty to your creditors, not to you.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Okay, wait a second. So I'm paying the fox to
guard my henhouse, and I'm trying to figure out why
the eggs keep getting eaten. Well, once you understand that
the CPA, just like we as attorneys, haven't drilled into
(17:59):
us and drilled into us and drilled into us. You
owe the duty to the client. You owe the duty
to the client. You owe the duty to the client.
And that's that's part of who we are. The CPA
gets it drilled into them over and over and over
and over that your job is to protect the public
against your client. I know you don't let people curse
(18:26):
on your podcast, but what the aff.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
It's like the prosecutor is defending me in my murder
trial after I killed my CPA for stealing a million
dollars from me.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Once you get that, and I'd promise you half the
people listening to this this has washed over them. They
have completely missed the point of what I've said because
it's so hard to wrap your head around this. Go
back and listen to this again. Better yet, read my book.
But it's true. Right, And so when you go to
(19:09):
your CPA, when you go to your bookkeeper and you
say to them, I want to implement profit first in
my law firm so I can make.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
A profit, and they say no, here's why it's allbs.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
There's not one single legitimate reason why they shouldn't embrace
profit first in their law firm. By the way, we
also run a tax strategy workshop. That's something we didn't
talk about. So every year we take dozens and dozens
and dozens of law from owners through a tax strategy workshop.
And my partner in the tax strategy workshop happens to
(19:51):
be a CPA. So I love some CPAs, not all
CPAs I don't like, And over and over and over
again we get law fomowners who will say, my CPA
said that was an audit red flag fn BS. That
(20:12):
is total FNBS. Right. We save lawyers tens of thousands
of dollars just on their taxes alone every year with
some pretty basic tax strategies which are right there in
(20:32):
the IRS Code, and their accountants are like no, no, no,
no no. The problem is that the accountants don't have
the courage and the bookkeepers don't have the courage to
charge enough to provide the quality of services that are
(20:52):
required to implement the more sophisticated strategies. Right. So this
is what happened to me. I woke up with a
sixty thousand dollars tax bill in twenty twelve, and I
was say, what the hell has happened here? And my
accountant had only charged me fifteen hundred bucks, and he
(21:13):
thought he was like doing me this big favorite because
he only charged me fifteen hundred bucks. Well, had I
paid five thousand dollars, I could have saved sixty thousand dollars,
and so you know, I'll have been net ahead by
what fifty four thousand dollars. But they don't do that
(21:33):
right by the way, lawyers do the same thing to
their clients all the time too. One of the things
I said was going to how to help them make
more money? Here? Watch, this is so simple. Ready, this
is so simple. They're not going to try it because
they're going to think it's too simple. But I'll tell
you that I've done this with hundreds and hundreds and
(21:55):
hundreds of law firms and it works just to a test.
All right, I'm gonna just take a little detour for
one second, Okay. Sure, I went to a tourist attraction
here in South Florida where I live. And this tourist
attraction was built in like the nineteen twenties or nineteen
(22:17):
thirties or something like that. And the original admission price
for this tourist attraction was a nickel. It was five
cent admission. Do you know how I know that it
was a five cent admission back then?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Still has a sign?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
No?
Speaker 7 (22:34):
Well, yes, because the sign is carved into the stone,
literally carved five cent admission into stone.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, it's hard to raise the price when it's carved
into stone at the entrance, right, it's not hard to
test a different value proposition in your law firm. The
next ten prospects that come in test a higher value proposition,
try raising your fee by ten percent right now. This
(23:10):
isn't just like a quick money grab. This isn't like
a just take the money and run right. This is
a test of the market's perception of the value that
you deliver. Right, Because if you're charging five hundred dollars
an hour, or if you're charging five thousand dollars for
a flat fee on a particular type of case or
matter or whatever it is, and you quote the fee
(23:32):
of five hundred and fifty dollars, well, you charge your
quote a fee of fifty five hundred dollars, and eight
out of ten of your prospects say, yes, Well, you
just increase the profit of your firm by ten percent
because your cost of good soul didn't change, your your
(23:54):
fixed overhead didn't your static overhead didn't change, your dynamic
overhead didn't change, and that extra ten percent goes straight
to the bottom line, which you can then use that
extra ten percent to either take ten percent more profit
out of the business or here's an idea, take half
(24:14):
of the ten percent and use it to fund your
kid's future. And take the other ten percent and invest
it in jump starting a new associate. Invest it to
jumpstart a new paralegal. Invest it to jumpstart an executive assistant,
and buy back twenty hours of your time every week. Right,
(24:39):
invest it in better training, invested in better equipment. Eric,
would you object to them investing it in testing some
new marketing?
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
That might be a smart thing to do, right. There's
so many ways to find an extra ten percent profit
in a law firm. It's just too easy.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, I wanted to cover the The thing that you
said about CPA is where the light bulb went on
for me, and that you just covered. I think the
big blind spot for an attorney would be all right, Well,
I know I need to hire somebody. I'm going to
hire a CPA because they have this title and they're
the expert. I'm just gonna trust them. It's like if
I go to the doctor, I don't typically argue with
the doctor if they give me some recommendation to do
(25:19):
to improve my health. And I think what you're saying
is they get locked into this trust. But the CPA
isn't looking out for them. The CPA is looking out
for the public, as you explain it. And the other
thing that I really liked your analogy was there was
a management accountant and a financial account and you gave
(25:40):
an analogy about the front seat and back seat. You
can you explain that to the audience of how that
works and the advantages of that.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, and I want to, I want to. I want
to just say a few things about the CPA not
looking out for you as a client, because this is
this is very confusing, right, because the human being who
is your CPA probably cares about you as a human
being and genuinely wants to help you. They're working against
(26:11):
their training though, right, They're working against their training, and
they're also you know, just because they're a CPA doesn't
mean they know the first thing about how to actually
run a business, right, Most CPAs ask them, you know,
do you have a business plan for your CPA firm?
(26:36):
Most of them, if you're telling you the truth, will
say no. Do you have a written marketing plan with
a marketing budget and key performance indicators? And do you
track where your CPA clients are coming from? And do
you track where your most profitable CPA clients are coming from?
(26:56):
And do you have a systematic organized way for converting
a prospective CPA client into a paying CPA client and
following up with the people that don't convert? And most
CPAs their answer is going to be no. Second main
part in your CPA firm, do you have a well?
(27:17):
I said marketing and then sales? I covered that also
in the third main part in your CPA firm? Do
you have a systematic organized methodology? Have you sat down
and documented how the work gets done? Or is it
just an artisan shop where we depend on you having
a good day to be brilliant and creative. Right, And
(27:39):
if today's a day that you had to fight with
your spouse, and if today's a day that your kid
pitched a fit on the way to school, it's going
to affect the quality of my services, right, no one,
and most CPAs are gonna say no. They don't have
documented processes and procedures for how the work gets done
in a consistent, predictable, reliable, profitable way that can then
(28:00):
be trained and scaled up to grow their CPA firm. Right,
ask the CPA, do you have a systematic, organized way
of recruiting, onboarding, training, and managing your people with objective
key performance indicators so you can have high standards and
(28:21):
be ruthless on your feedback on the performance without being
such an abuse of jerk to the employees. And most CPAs,
if they're being honest, we'll say no. Now. Now here's
where CPAs and lawyers are a little bit different, right,
Because most CPAs, if you ask them, do you have
a twelve month forward looking budget, you know, hopefully they
(28:45):
say yes. Right, most lawyers have to say no. The
point I'm trying to make is just because your CPA
is technically skilled at interpreting and understanding the tax code
and generally accepting a running principles, doesn't mean they actually
know anything about the business of running a CPA firm. Certainly,
(29:09):
not the business of running a law firm. Right, So
the point of making is I don't want to vilify
the human being who's a CPA. I want us to
understand that this is a human being who was indoctrinated
to look out for the public, not indoctrinated to look
out for the client, who probably never took a class
(29:30):
on how to manage and grow and run a profitable
CPA firm, and they just don't know what they're doing.
And on top of that, they probably have the same
fears and doubts and insecurities that most lawyers have when
it comes to testing different price points, and so they're
usually systematically undercharging, which makes it impossible for them to
(29:55):
deliver the kind of services that can maximize the value
to the client. I just didn't want to villify CPAs
now as far as the and I.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Know that was a little bit tongue in cheek, but
I think the point that the you know, the listeners
should get is that your CPA is probably doing all
the right things and has great training, but we're not
all the right things but all the things that they
were trained on, but they're they're not looking out for
your profit first, and that that really is a theme
(30:25):
of your book is this profit first mentality. And one
of the things that you know I pulled out of
there is you gave the example of you know, if
you need another ten thousand dollars, not need, but if
you wanted to make another ten thousand dollars, you can
do it one of two ways if you're operating inefficiently
right now. One go out and build fifty seven thousand
(30:47):
more dollars in revenue and then your take on that
is going to be about ten thousand. Or you have
an accountant process where you can actually give yourself back
that ten thousand in you know, you know, avoid those
in taxes, and you've now made that same ten thousand
dollars without doing anything else different.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
So your law firm is supposed to work for you.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
You're not supposed to be a slave or a prisoner
to your law firm. Your law firm is supposed to
work for you. Your law firm is not your baby.
Your law firm is your mule. It's there to pull
your plow so you can feed your family and live
a great life. You're not supposed to be taking pride
and how much you suffer and how much you sacrifice
and how much you can endure and how much you
(31:32):
can do without. You're supposed to be taking pride and
how much value your business provides to your clients, And
you're supposed to be taking pride in how smart you
are about delivering that value in a way that's efficient
and profitable for you. You asked me about management accountants versus
financial accountants. These are two very very different things. All
(31:57):
accountants are trained on financial accounting, few accountants are trained
on management accounting. So in my business, how to manage
a small law firm, We function as the CEO for
over five hundred of some of the most profitable, fastts growing,
most fun to run law firms you could ever even imagine.
(32:19):
We also function as the chief operating officer, and we
function as the chief financial officer, and we build chief
financial officers. Chief financial officers are built out of management accountants.
They're not built out of people who are only financial accountants.
All right, So what's the difference. A financial accountant is
(32:41):
a person who is primarily focused on making sure that
you are accurately and completely reporting your income and accurately
and completely reporting your expenses. This is a historical report
of what has already happened. Right, in the last twelve months,
(33:04):
this is how much revenue Eric's firm generated. And in
the last twelve months, these are the expenses that Eric's
firm incurred. And what's left over is the profit from
which we pay taxes. A management accountant is looking forward
at the next twelve months and saying, Eric, how much
(33:27):
income do you want to take out of your firm
in the next twelve months. And let's say you say
I want to earn a million dollars income from my
firm next year. Okay, great, Now we figure out to
earn a million dollars out of your firm out of
let's just say we do our projections. We crunch the numbers,
(33:47):
We figure out the cost of goods sold and the
cost of acquisition and labor costs and all that kind
of stuff, and we say, okay, the firm's gonna run
at let's say a twenty percent net operating income, right, Well,
a million dollars of income for you is twenty percent
of five million dollars, right, And then we say, okay,
(34:10):
what's the average case value? And this is one of
the things that I really like about your marketing your
approach to marketing, your firm's approach to marketing, because unlike
so many marketers, you actually take an active interest in
some of these numbers so you can help your clients
figure out the real cost of acquisition, to figure out,
you know, are we better off getting a twenty thousand
(34:32):
dollars case from you know, Facebook, or are we actually
better off getting a ten thousand dollars case from pay
per click. And maybe the ten thousand dollars case from
pay per click is actually more profitable than the twenty
thousand dollar case from face. Anyway, let's just say, so
(34:53):
you take the take you want to make a million
dollars to see the chief financial officer crunches and numbers
pre rejects it out. And let's just say, for purposes
of this example, that the firm's going to run out
of twenty percent net operating income, which means the firm
got to gross five million dollars, right, And let's say
that the blended average case value is I'm just making
(35:13):
this up five thousand dollars. So five million dollars divided
by five thousand dollars means the firm's got to be
able to open and close and get paid for a
thousand cases a year. Right now, we say a thousand
cases a year. Great, So what does it take to
open and close and get paid for a thousand cases
a year? And again I'm just using five thousand dollars
(35:36):
as a number I pulled out a year. Whatever the
number is is what it is. And we figure out that, Okay,
the average attorney in your firm, in your practice area,
because of how well you've created your processes and your
systems and your procedures, maybe that attorney I'm just going
to make it up, can can handle one hundred cases
a year, right, Well, a thousand cases a year. If
(35:58):
the average attorney can hand one hundred cases a year,
so we take a thousand, divide it by one hundred,
means we need ten attorneys. Right. Well, let's take a
look at this. Do we have ten attorneys? Oh? No,
look at that. We have five attorneys? All right, So
should we dial the marketing all the way up to
(36:19):
a five million dollar run rate? Or should we dial
the marketing up to maybe a seven million dollar run
rate and get busy on recruiting before we run out
of capacity? Right? These are the kinds of conversations that
a chief financial officer. These are the kinds of conversations
(36:39):
that a management accountant will have with a law firm,
a financial accountant, which is what most CPAs are. Only
a financial accountant. Again, as I said, they're just going
to say, how much did you generate last year, how
much did you spend last year, here's the profit, here's
your tax bill, And maybe they throw you a few
(37:01):
crumbs with some really simple, dumb, dumb, most basic of
basic tax ideas. Oh, why don't we do a home office.
I mean, of course you could do a home office.
Any idiot knows you can do a home office. You know,
you start getting a lot more sophisticated tax strategies when
you're when you're earning two hundred thousand dollars a year
(37:22):
out of your firm. You ought to have a dedicated
tax strategist. I promise you they will work for free.
Imagine that, a tax strategist, like, my services are free.
Just so we're clear, my services are free. Right because
you give me a dollar, I give you back five dollars.
(37:43):
What did it cost you to work with me? Nothing? Right?
A good tax strategist, and I don't sell tax strategy services.
We have a tax strategy workshop, but I don't do
tax strategy services, so I'm not like pitching that a
good tax strategy. It's free, right because you're going to
(38:04):
invest five or ten thousand dollars for them to do
a tax strategy for you, and they're going to save
you twenty thousand dollars. Well, what did that really cost you? Nothing? Anyway?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, I feel like and we're just about out of time,
but I want to make sure because we barely scratch
the surface on what you offer. So if we can,
if we can wrap up this episode.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Maybe show them how to make an extra ten percent.
We've showed at least three ways to make an extra
ten percent at this point.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yes, so more value than you even promised in the beginning.
But the thing that I don't I want everybody on
this podcast to hear because I hopefully you'll come back,
because I feel like there's so much more that we
can talk about. But you you said something to me
before we fired up the mics, was that people work
their way into and.
Speaker 8 (38:52):
Out of your system, your your your your business, right,
if you could explain that, because one of the things
that I've seen a lot more over the last two
to three years is these fractional CEO, fractional COO, fractional CMO.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
And this is really something that you really cover all
those bases, but it's not something that you implement all
at once. So if you wouldn't mind just really kind
of explaining the work how someone would work their way
into and out of your services.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, so first off, let me say we have a
waiting list. We've had a waiting list for the better
part of two years. So this isn't like the high
pressure tactics, right. The way the way that someone begins
working with us is they go to the website and
they just start downloading some resources. They sign up for
some webinars. If you want to come out to a
live workshop or two, we'll invite you out to a
(39:43):
live workshop. You can meet hundreds of our members, you
can take some free free classes we'll give you. We're
just here. We could share tons and tons of stuff.
We're not going to run out of awesomeness, right, we
got we got loads of awesomeness. And I say we,
I mean I've got one hundred employees, I've got a
thirty million dollar business. Might I get way too much credit.
(40:05):
I got an amazing team of superstars who make me
look like a rock star every day, and I and
I get get a I get a disproportionate amount of
the credit because I'm the front man. But the point
I'm making is that's how you get in. The way
you get in is just start taking advantage of stuff.
And if it resonates with you, great, you'll want more.
(40:25):
If it doesn't resonate with you, you know it'll help you anyway. Then,
at some point, when the time is right, usually you'll
be on a waiting list and you'll get a call
to say a spot will be opening up, do you
want it? And then you'll usually start off by working
with us as your CEO, your chief executive officer, the
chief executive officer of your business right and it will
(40:49):
help you put together your business plan and your marketing plan,
and your sales plan, and your staffing plan, and your
basic you know, processes and systems and procedures, basic budget,
basic financial projections, all the stuff we just talked about.
And then typically around five hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand
dollars in gross revenue for most law firms, you typically
(41:11):
at that point need a chief operating officer, and we
need to then, you know, build better processes, better systems,
better procedures, so you can start to staff up and
scale up your operations. Right now, you've got a system's
driven business instead of a business that's fueled by your sweat.
(41:31):
And typically once you get that in place, BOOM is
going to go to a million, million and a half
dollars and around a million, seven hundred and fifty million dollars.
That's typically where we have to install the chief financial
officer because at that point it's just too easy to
lose one hundred thousand dollars in a seven hundred or
a million dollar law firm. Right and the chief financial
officer allows us to make better decisions, quicker decisions, more
(41:55):
confident decisions, more rational decisions. Data driven decision making leads
to smarter decisions, better decisions, all the things I just said. Well,
you get to around a million and a half dollars
in revenue and your law firm around a million and
a half to two million dollars in gross revenue is
going to start to outgrow our chief operating officer program,
(42:18):
and so we're going to help you hire, train, manage
on board and support your first professional legal administrator, So
a chief operating officer and a professional legal administrator, they're
the same thing. In the business world, they're called coos.
In the legal industry, they're called professional legal administrators. Same difference,
(42:40):
And that's typically going to be one hundred and fifty
to two hundred thousand dollars a year position, which is
why you typically wait to a million and a half
or two million dollars before we bring that person on board.
Then we get to around three million dollars and at
that point you got to bring the CFO in house.
Right at that point, our fractional timeshare CFO service, it's
(43:00):
designed for you to outgrow it. And then you bring
in the full time professional CFO one hundred and fifty
two hundred thousand dollars, you know, out of three million
dollar firm, and then you get to abound seven million,
ten million, and at that point you got to make
a decision about kind of like what do you want
to be when you're growing, right, and some people decide,
I want to be the CEO of my ten million
(43:23):
dollar firm and grow up to twenty thirty fifty million dollars,
and other people say you know what, I don't want
to be the CEO of my ten million dollar firm.
I want to maybe go back to practicing law, but
only taking the kind of cases that I love taking.
Or I want to start a SEP, a completely separate business,
(43:43):
or I want to, you know, go live my life,
whatever they want. The point of making is it's a
very personal decision. There's no there's no formula. Because you're
a human being, you're a unique individual, and so we
got to help you make a plan for how you're
going to make them out of your one unique, precious
life and make your law firm serve that life, rather
(44:07):
than prescribing, like here's our fourteen point plan for how
you're gonna do this, and you get to this, and
then you do that, and then you do that, and
then you do this, and here's this ratio. And you're
a human being, right, You're not a machine, You're not
a thing. But the point that you're asking is our
service is designed for law firms to grow into it,
(44:27):
and then for law from owners to grow out of it.
And then, you know, typically they get to ten million
dollars and they some of them stick around, and they
want us to keep being their CEO. Some of them
decide to be the CEO of their own and they
still stick around because they love the community.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, that's great, and I would encourage anybody to do
a little bit more digging. You've got so many resources
out there, and if we could just finish right and
we're gonna put all those in the show notes. But
if you can give somebody the first step, because there
are there are so many resources between books and website,
If somebody is curious to a little bit more, what
what's the first place you'd point them towards.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I would say the easiest thing to begin with is
go to the podcast called Profit First for Lawyers and
just listen to the podcast, right, And if you absolutely
hate what you hear on the podcast and you think
we're a bunch of a holes and you hate everything
we say and you hate the way we say it,
(45:24):
and you do want nothing to do with it, it's
not going to get any better after that, right. So,
so that's a really easy way to kind of like
dip your toe in and see if we're maybe what
you want. Buy the book Profit First for Lawyers, go
to Amazon and buy it, read it. It will definitely
I guarantee you it will help you make more money.
That is, there's no doubt about that. Read the book,
(45:49):
start and you'll start, you'll start discovering resources. And if
you want to and if you want to come out
and come to one of our live quarterly meetings as
my guest, if you want to come to one of
our workshops, We've got dozens of workshops that we run
every quarter for members only. We don't sell these workshops.
This is a member's only workshop environment. But if you
want to come out as a guest, you know, we'll
(46:10):
be happy as a courtesy to you, Eric and the
show to extend a limited number obviously not everyone, but
a limited number of just courtesy imitations and check it out.
And you know, we're not in a rush. Let's get
to know each other. Most of our members have been
with us for I mean, we got people who've been
with us for ten years, eight years, seven years. I
(46:32):
mean we're looking for long term relationships, not just like
we've been through it all, been around. I've been around.
You know, get the reference, you get it, you get it.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
I'm assuming this is a you know type.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Of Okay, I've been around, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, Well, that's a good way to take a flamethrow
it to this place. Come on, I thought it was
some mob movie but sent to a woman close because
he's been in so many mob movies, so I was adjacent.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Hello to my little friend that one.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
I know.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
You see, John, you're not gonna like doing business with us,
But if you like this and you like Star Trek references, well.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I think entertaining and making more money is there's there's
there's nothing wrong with either of those two, so do
them both is quite a bit of value. But our John,
thank you for your time today. This has been a
It's really good for me myself because I, like I said,
I went through your book and I wanted to hear
from you some of the other, you know, fine points
that you put on this and I would encourage anybody
(47:41):
to take those first couple of steps. Look into the
show notes. I'll have our guy put that podcast that
you mentioned in the show notes. So it makes it
real easy for somebody to just roll right into that one.
So thanks again. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
I appreciate having having the opportunity to be on your show.
I value the opportunity and I hope I made a
contry for you and your audience.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
Market My Market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com
Your law firm is not your baby. Your law firm
is your mule. It's there to pull your plow so
you can feed your family and live a great life.
You're not supposed to be taking pride and how much
you suffer and how much you sacrifice, and how much
you can endure and how much you can do without.
You're supposed to be taking pride and how much value
your business provides to your clients. And you're supposed to
(00:23):
be taking pride in how smart you are about delivering
that value in a way that's efficient and profitable for you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric BERSONO, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts in the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me R. John Robbins, who is
the owner and CEO of How to Manage a Small
Law Firm. Our John, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Eric, So I feel like this could be an extended
version podcast. You know, I personally went through your background,
your website. You were nice enough to send me a
copy of your new book, which I was able to
glean over. But if you could give our audience a
little bit of background on who you are and what
(01:26):
you're doing now so they have an idea of your
experience and how it can help them.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Before I do that, could I ask that we give
your audience a commitment or a promise about what value
we're going to deliver, because probably I'm guessing they don't
really care who I am or my background, or my
credentials or my experience. If I can't help them, who cares?
And if I can help them, maybe then they want
(01:55):
to learn more about me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, let's talk about how you can make a law
firm more profit football. That's really the section. As like
I said, I got the book a couple of days
ago and was skimming through it and was really just
starting to get into the meat of how to make
a law firm more profitable. So let's start with that guarantee.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, I'll show your audience how to make their
law firm at least ten percent more profitable without any
fancy technology, without hiring more staff, without really having to
make any kind of a big investment just by taking
(02:34):
advantage of the tools and resources that they probably have
already at their disposal.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sound good, sounds perfect, all right?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Now, I got to think about there's so many different
Now we're talking about a three hour podcast because there's
so many different ways to do it. Here. Look, look,
the way that we double the revenues of a law
firm is not with one giant, grand gesture. The way
that we double the revenues of a law firm is
one brick at a time. Right, That's how you build
a solid, sustainable law firm business that gives you predictable revenue,
(03:12):
predictable profits that can work for you while you're gone
for thirty you know, thirty days at a time with
emergency access only is really what we aim for with
most of our members. So you know, the goal is
to transform the practice that you have to work for
into a business that works for you so that you
can have a life. And we just use thirty days
(03:36):
as a pretty good test because I think that's that's
probably a big improvement in the quality of life for
most law firm owners when they can get their business,
When they get their business to the point where it
can we're each of the seven main parts of their
business keeps working for them even while they're away. So
while you're gone for thirty consecutive days with emergency access only,
(03:57):
you want the marketing to keep working for you consistently, predictably, reliably,
and profitably. While you're away. You want the sales process,
the sales mechanism, the intake, the meeting with the prospective
new clients, the following up with the prospective new clients
to keep happening consistently, predictably, reliably while you're away for
(04:19):
thirty days with emergency access only. And by the way,
it should not be a lawyer doing the sales. If
you have a lawyer doing the sales, that's an easy
way to increase the revenues of the law firm by
a lot more than ten percent while they're away for
thirty days with emergency access only. The goal is that
the operations keep functioning. So there's seven main parts of
every successful law firm and seven main parts of every
(04:42):
struggling law firm. Marketing, sales, production, people, physical plan, financial controls,
and the biggest part, the biggest challenge, The biggest issue
is the mindset of the owner. Right to help to
make the law firm serve the owner financially, serve the
owner personally, serve the owner professionally. So that's kind of
like what we aim for in how to bang a
small law Firm.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, and i'd like to just you know, part of
the thing that I pulled out from your website and
your book is that mindset piece I think is really
important and we should start there. So anybody listening to this,
it's you know, this is two tricks that you can
do to your law firm to make more money, is
not what we're talking about. You developed an acronym that
(05:24):
is take all your excuses and shove them up your beep,
which to me is saying that's something that your people
need to take ownership, and the way that you've always
done them doesn't mean that that's the right way to
do them now. So when you talk about changing an
attorney's mindset, what are some of the tougher jobs that
you have is taking that mindset from where it is
(05:46):
currently to reshaping it into something that understands this new system.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right, So you got to keep in mind, I've been
doing this since nineteen ninety nine, right, I started at
the Florida Bar at the Law Office Management Assistant service
as a small law firm management advisor with Lomas back
in nineteen ninety nine. This is all I've been doing
for twenty five years, right, and I've worked with thousands
(06:12):
and thousands and thousands and thousands of law firms. I
spent three years working with mid sized firms, you know,
fifteen twenty five fifty lawyer firms, but most of my
career has been in the under ten million dollar, under
twenty million dollar, under ten million dollar firm range. So
(06:33):
the five hundred law firms that we managed today, I
mentioned to you earlier that half of them are under
five million dollars in revenue, right, Probably half of them
are under one million dollars in revenue. We've got firms
up to thirty million, but the majority of them are
the five hundred to five hundred thousand and five million
dollar range. Is kind of our sweet spot and the
(06:55):
biggest challenge, the biggest, biggest, biggest challenge is to really
get the owner of the law firm to think of
the law firm as a business, which is a separate
entity from themselves. Right, Your law firm isn't your baby right,
(07:18):
you don't. I mean, like, what wouldn't you do for
your kids? There's probably nothing you wouldn't do for your kids, right.
You'd suffer, you'd sacrifice, you'd do without, you'd work crazy hours,
you do all kinds of heroics for your kids. Your
law firm is supposed to work for you. You're not supposed
to have to suffer and sacrifice and do without. You
(07:42):
might be willing to do that for a short time
because you expect to return on that investment. But changing
the nature of the relationship between the owner of the
law firm and the law firm itself is the big hurdle.
That's the big mindset shift that that we've got to
work on first. Once the owner of a law firm
(08:06):
starts thinking of the law firm as a business that
exists to serve their needs as opposed to taking pride
in how much they suffer and how much they sacrifice
and how much they can serve the law firm, the
rest is pretty mechanical. Look, law firms are very simple
businesses to run. And I understand that this is going
(08:28):
to break the hearts of some of your listeners and
probably piss off a lot of your listeners, and believe me,
I've got a little fan club that's been following me
around for twenty years who really get upset about this truth? Right?
The truth is, law firms are very simple businesses to run.
I've already mentioned the seven main parts of every successful
(08:50):
law firm and every unsuccessful law firm. Marketing leads to sales.
Sales leads to production. Production requires people. People need things.
That's physical plant. You got to use financial controls to
make sure you're navigating and doing things the right way.
And it's all in service of your goals of the owner,
(09:10):
your financial goals, your personal goals, your professional goals. Compared
to like any other business you can probably imagine, law
firms have fewer moving parts. They're more simple to run,
they require less working capital to grow. They present a
much lower risk profile to the owner than a restaurant,
(09:32):
than an HVAC company, than a moving company. I mean,
almost any kind of a business you can think of
is harder to run than a law firm. So you
don't have to do very much to transform the performance
of a law firm, which really pisss off a lot
of struggling law firm owners because wow, you know all
(09:54):
this time, I thought that this was such a complicated business,
and that's why I'm struggling so much. Right, And you
take that excuse away, and what you're left with is
the reason that your law firm isn't performing financially the
way you want it to perform is very simple, Right.
It's because you're not causing the marketing to be done
(10:17):
the right way, because you're not causing the sales conversion
process to be done the right way, because you didn't
take the time to think through and document the processes
and the systems and the procedures for how the work's
supposed to get produced. Imagine a restaurant being run by
the world's greatest chef, right, but with no written recipes,
(10:40):
with no written instructions for how the kitchen staff is
supposed to do anything right, with no training or onboarding
or standards or the front of house for how they're
supposed to run, I mean, the restaurant would run badly. Well,
it's the same thing in a law firm. The point
of making is you just get the marketing into alignment
(11:03):
with the sales. You get the sales into alignment with
the production. You get the alignment that You get the
people trained up on the processes and the systems and
the procedures for the production, and you give them the
tools and the resources they need, which is part of
the physical plant. And you put some pretty basic financial
controls in place. It doesn't require highly sophisticated financial controls
(11:24):
to run a ten fifty million dollars law firm. Pretty
simple stuff. It's gonna work. But then, what are my excuses? Right?
What the excuses are? You got to just do it.
That's why the acronym is take all your excuses and
shove them up your your It's tay A Studia t
(11:48):
A y e A s t u Ya, which by
the way, is my son's name. Also, his name is
tay A Studio. And he'll tell you straight to your
face exactly what it means.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yep. I saw that in your bio as well, which
is one of the reasons I wanted to bring up
that it shows your commitment to this. Of all the
things you just said, one of the things I really
want to drill down on is the financial taking ownership
of the financials. Now, I was at the part in
your book where you were mentioning CPAs and you have
a specific. You have a specific opinion on CPAs, and
(12:23):
I'd love you to kind of explain that and why
that is because I was in the same mindset I
think that a lot of your clients are. When I
was like, well, what's wrong with the CPA? I don't
get it, And then after getting through that chapter, I
was like, ah, now it opens my mind, which I
think is the first key to unlocking a little bit
more profitability.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Well, that's one of the keys to unlocking a lot
more profitability. Not just a little, it's a lot. It's like,
look a million dollar house. Right, Let's say you buy
a million dollar house, and let's just say, to make
(13:04):
the math easy, with no down payment, it's going to
cost you roughly five thousand dollars a month principal, interest,
taxes and insurance. Yeah, maybe you got some HOA or
some something like that. You know, five six thousand dollars
a month. What if you could have a free million
dollar house? Would you like a free million dollar house,
a one million dollar house for free? I think most people,
(13:26):
I think most people would wouldn't mind that. Right. That's
how much your CPA is probably costing you. They're basically
flushing a million dollar house down the toilet on you
because of how they operate. So I got to give
(13:47):
a little context for this. Right, So, my undergraduate degree
is in Communications, Law, Economics, and Government from the American
University in Washington, DC. I don't have a business degree.
I don't have a finance degree. I don't have an MBA,
I don't have a CPA behind my name. I just
went to law school. Right. My business has been in
(14:09):
the ink five thousand every year as one of the
five thousand fastest growing companies in the country for nine
years in a row. Last year we grossed over thirty
million dollars. I created more million and multimillion dollar law
firms than anyone else on the planet, and no one
even pretends to have done more than me, for no
other reason than the fact that I've been doing it
longer than anyone else. And what I'm telling you is
(14:31):
is from the school of hard knocks. Right, because my CPA,
my former CPA, wasted a million dollar house for me. Right,
I've lost millions and millions of dollars before I figured
this stuff out. And I'm sharing that because I think
there's a lot of embarrassment that goes into facing up
(14:53):
to the issues that I talk about in the book
Profit First for Lawyers, And that's really why I wrote
the book. You know, the book Profit First for Lawyers
doesn't teach how to implement profit first, by the way.
It's designed to give the law firm owner the tools
and the arguments and the evidence and the ammunition to
(15:16):
advocate for themselves for why you should implement profit first
in your law firm. Because the minute you pick up
Profit First by Mike mccallois, which you should definitely read
and listen to the audio. The audio is even better
than the book, by the way, because he performs it himself.
And the guy in the audio of the Profit First
for Lawyers audiobook is the same guy who sat on
(15:38):
my kitchen table. He is very authentic. It's really funny. Anyway.
The point making is he asked me to write the
book because over and over and over again lawyers would
come back and say, well, my accountant or my CPA
or my bookkeeper told me that profit first won't work
for a law firm which is complete and utter bs.
(16:00):
So here's the deal. The P in CPA stands for public.
We all know that right now, lawyers, we all and
I'm a lawyer too. We all took an oath of attorney,
and the ethical rules that we are all bound by
as attorneys is to be a zealous advocate for our
(16:24):
client against the world right. It's us protecting our client
against the world right. You can tell us where you
buried the body, and we can't tell anyone where you
buried the body. You can give us the bloody knife
and the smoking gun, and we are literally not allowed
to tell anyone what you told us on pain of
(16:45):
getting disbarred. Yeah, and so this is so drilled into us,
this is so ingrained in us as lawyers that we
tend to assume that it's the same for CPAs, but
it's not. Accountants. CPAs actually take the oath of CPA,
(17:07):
and the oath of CPA says that the CPA owes
a duty to the public. The CPA owes a duty.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Of loyalty to the public. The CPA, your CPA, who
you're paying. They owe a duty to your creditors.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Your CPA owes a duty to your creditors, not to you.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Okay, wait a second. So I'm paying the fox to
guard my henhouse, and I'm trying to figure out why
the eggs keep getting eaten. Well, once you understand that
the CPA, just like we as attorneys, haven't drilled into
(17:59):
us and drilled into us and drilled into us. You
owe the duty to the client. You owe the duty
to the client. You owe the duty to the client.
And that's that's part of who we are. The CPA
gets it drilled into them over and over and over
and over that your job is to protect the public
against your client. I know you don't let people curse
(18:26):
on your podcast, but what the aff.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
It's like the prosecutor is defending me in my murder
trial after I killed my CPA for stealing a million
dollars from me.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Once you get that, and I'd promise you half the
people listening to this this has washed over them. They
have completely missed the point of what I've said because
it's so hard to wrap your head around this. Go
back and listen to this again. Better yet, read my book.
But it's true. Right, And so when you go to
(19:09):
your CPA, when you go to your bookkeeper and you
say to them, I want to implement profit first in
my law firm so I can make.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
A profit, and they say no, here's why it's allbs.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
There's not one single legitimate reason why they shouldn't embrace
profit first in their law firm. By the way, we
also run a tax strategy workshop. That's something we didn't
talk about. So every year we take dozens and dozens
and dozens of law from owners through a tax strategy workshop.
And my partner in the tax strategy workshop happens to
(19:51):
be a CPA. So I love some CPAs, not all
CPAs I don't like, And over and over and over
again we get law fomowners who will say, my CPA
said that was an audit red flag fn BS. That
(20:12):
is total FNBS. Right. We save lawyers tens of thousands
of dollars just on their taxes alone every year with
some pretty basic tax strategies which are right there in
(20:32):
the IRS Code, and their accountants are like no, no, no,
no no. The problem is that the accountants don't have
the courage and the bookkeepers don't have the courage to
charge enough to provide the quality of services that are
(20:52):
required to implement the more sophisticated strategies. Right. So this
is what happened to me. I woke up with a
sixty thousand dollars tax bill in twenty twelve, and I
was say, what the hell has happened here? And my
accountant had only charged me fifteen hundred bucks, and he
(21:13):
thought he was like doing me this big favorite because
he only charged me fifteen hundred bucks. Well, had I
paid five thousand dollars, I could have saved sixty thousand dollars,
and so you know, I'll have been net ahead by
what fifty four thousand dollars. But they don't do that
(21:33):
right by the way, lawyers do the same thing to
their clients all the time too. One of the things
I said was going to how to help them make
more money? Here? Watch, this is so simple. Ready, this
is so simple. They're not going to try it because
they're going to think it's too simple. But I'll tell
you that I've done this with hundreds and hundreds and
(21:55):
hundreds of law firms and it works just to a test.
All right, I'm gonna just take a little detour for
one second, Okay. Sure, I went to a tourist attraction
here in South Florida where I live. And this tourist
attraction was built in like the nineteen twenties or nineteen
(22:17):
thirties or something like that. And the original admission price
for this tourist attraction was a nickel. It was five
cent admission. Do you know how I know that it
was a five cent admission back then?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Still has a sign?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
No?
Speaker 7 (22:34):
Well, yes, because the sign is carved into the stone,
literally carved five cent admission into stone.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, it's hard to raise the price when it's carved
into stone at the entrance, right, it's not hard to
test a different value proposition in your law firm. The
next ten prospects that come in test a higher value proposition,
try raising your fee by ten percent right now. This
(23:10):
isn't just like a quick money grab. This isn't like
a just take the money and run right. This is
a test of the market's perception of the value that
you deliver. Right, Because if you're charging five hundred dollars
an hour, or if you're charging five thousand dollars for
a flat fee on a particular type of case or
matter or whatever it is, and you quote the fee
(23:32):
of five hundred and fifty dollars, well, you charge your
quote a fee of fifty five hundred dollars, and eight
out of ten of your prospects say, yes, Well, you
just increase the profit of your firm by ten percent
because your cost of good soul didn't change, your your
(23:54):
fixed overhead didn't your static overhead didn't change, your dynamic
overhead didn't change, and that extra ten percent goes straight
to the bottom line, which you can then use that
extra ten percent to either take ten percent more profit
out of the business or here's an idea, take half
(24:14):
of the ten percent and use it to fund your
kid's future. And take the other ten percent and invest
it in jump starting a new associate. Invest it to
jumpstart a new paralegal. Invest it to jumpstart an executive assistant,
and buy back twenty hours of your time every week. Right,
(24:39):
invest it in better training, invested in better equipment. Eric,
would you object to them investing it in testing some
new marketing?
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
That might be a smart thing to do, right. There's
so many ways to find an extra ten percent profit
in a law firm. It's just too easy.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, I wanted to cover the The thing that you
said about CPA is where the light bulb went on
for me, and that you just covered. I think the
big blind spot for an attorney would be all right, Well,
I know I need to hire somebody. I'm going to
hire a CPA because they have this title and they're
the expert. I'm just gonna trust them. It's like if
I go to the doctor, I don't typically argue with
the doctor if they give me some recommendation to do
(25:19):
to improve my health. And I think what you're saying
is they get locked into this trust. But the CPA
isn't looking out for them. The CPA is looking out
for the public, as you explain it. And the other
thing that I really liked your analogy was there was
a management accountant and a financial account and you gave
(25:40):
an analogy about the front seat and back seat. You
can you explain that to the audience of how that
works and the advantages of that.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, and I want to, I want to. I want
to just say a few things about the CPA not
looking out for you as a client, because this is
this is very confusing, right, because the human being who
is your CPA probably cares about you as a human
being and genuinely wants to help you. They're working against
(26:11):
their training though, right, They're working against their training, and
they're also you know, just because they're a CPA doesn't
mean they know the first thing about how to actually
run a business, right, Most CPAs ask them, you know,
do you have a business plan for your CPA firm?
(26:36):
Most of them, if you're telling you the truth, will
say no. Do you have a written marketing plan with
a marketing budget and key performance indicators? And do you
track where your CPA clients are coming from? And do
you track where your most profitable CPA clients are coming from?
(26:56):
And do you have a systematic organized way for converting
a prospective CPA client into a paying CPA client and
following up with the people that don't convert? And most
CPAs their answer is going to be no. Second main
part in your CPA firm, do you have a well?
(27:17):
I said marketing and then sales? I covered that also
in the third main part in your CPA firm? Do
you have a systematic organized methodology? Have you sat down
and documented how the work gets done? Or is it
just an artisan shop where we depend on you having
a good day to be brilliant and creative. Right, And
(27:39):
if today's a day that you had to fight with
your spouse, and if today's a day that your kid
pitched a fit on the way to school, it's going
to affect the quality of my services, right, no one,
and most CPAs are gonna say no. They don't have
documented processes and procedures for how the work gets done
in a consistent, predictable, reliable, profitable way that can then
(28:00):
be trained and scaled up to grow their CPA firm. Right,
ask the CPA, do you have a systematic, organized way
of recruiting, onboarding, training, and managing your people with objective
key performance indicators so you can have high standards and
(28:21):
be ruthless on your feedback on the performance without being
such an abuse of jerk to the employees. And most CPAs,
if they're being honest, we'll say no. Now. Now here's
where CPAs and lawyers are a little bit different, right,
Because most CPAs, if you ask them, do you have
a twelve month forward looking budget, you know, hopefully they
(28:45):
say yes. Right, most lawyers have to say no. The
point I'm trying to make is just because your CPA
is technically skilled at interpreting and understanding the tax code
and generally accepting a running principles, doesn't mean they actually
know anything about the business of running a CPA firm. Certainly,
(29:09):
not the business of running a law firm. Right, So
the point of making is I don't want to vilify
the human being who's a CPA. I want us to
understand that this is a human being who was indoctrinated
to look out for the public, not indoctrinated to look
out for the client, who probably never took a class
(29:30):
on how to manage and grow and run a profitable
CPA firm, and they just don't know what they're doing.
And on top of that, they probably have the same
fears and doubts and insecurities that most lawyers have when
it comes to testing different price points, and so they're
usually systematically undercharging, which makes it impossible for them to
(29:55):
deliver the kind of services that can maximize the value
to the client. I just didn't want to villify CPAs
now as far as the and I.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Know that was a little bit tongue in cheek, but
I think the point that the you know, the listeners
should get is that your CPA is probably doing all
the right things and has great training, but we're not
all the right things but all the things that they
were trained on, but they're they're not looking out for
your profit first, and that that really is a theme
(30:25):
of your book is this profit first mentality. And one
of the things that you know I pulled out of
there is you gave the example of you know, if
you need another ten thousand dollars, not need, but if
you wanted to make another ten thousand dollars, you can
do it one of two ways if you're operating inefficiently
right now. One go out and build fifty seven thousand
(30:47):
more dollars in revenue and then your take on that
is going to be about ten thousand. Or you have
an accountant process where you can actually give yourself back
that ten thousand in you know, you know, avoid those
in taxes, and you've now made that same ten thousand
dollars without doing anything else different.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
So your law firm is supposed to work for you.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
You're not supposed to be a slave or a prisoner
to your law firm. Your law firm is supposed to
work for you. Your law firm is not your baby.
Your law firm is your mule. It's there to pull
your plow so you can feed your family and live
a great life. You're not supposed to be taking pride
and how much you suffer and how much you sacrifice
and how much you can endure and how much you
(31:32):
can do without. You're supposed to be taking pride and
how much value your business provides to your clients, And
you're supposed to be taking pride in how smart you
are about delivering that value in a way that's efficient
and profitable for you. You asked me about management accountants versus
financial accountants. These are two very very different things. All
(31:57):
accountants are trained on financial accounting, few accountants are trained
on management accounting. So in my business, how to manage
a small law firm, We function as the CEO for
over five hundred of some of the most profitable, fastts growing,
most fun to run law firms you could ever even imagine.
(32:19):
We also function as the chief operating officer, and we
function as the chief financial officer, and we build chief
financial officers. Chief financial officers are built out of management accountants.
They're not built out of people who are only financial accountants.
All right, So what's the difference. A financial accountant is
(32:41):
a person who is primarily focused on making sure that
you are accurately and completely reporting your income and accurately
and completely reporting your expenses. This is a historical report
of what has already happened. Right, in the last twelve months,
(33:04):
this is how much revenue Eric's firm generated. And in
the last twelve months, these are the expenses that Eric's
firm incurred. And what's left over is the profit from
which we pay taxes. A management accountant is looking forward
at the next twelve months and saying, Eric, how much
(33:27):
income do you want to take out of your firm
in the next twelve months. And let's say you say
I want to earn a million dollars income from my
firm next year. Okay, great, Now we figure out to
earn a million dollars out of your firm out of
let's just say we do our projections. We crunch the numbers,
(33:47):
We figure out the cost of goods sold and the
cost of acquisition and labor costs and all that kind
of stuff, and we say, okay, the firm's gonna run
at let's say a twenty percent net operating income, right, Well,
a million dollars of income for you is twenty percent
of five million dollars, right, And then we say, okay,
(34:10):
what's the average case value? And this is one of
the things that I really like about your marketing your
approach to marketing, your firm's approach to marketing, because unlike
so many marketers, you actually take an active interest in
some of these numbers so you can help your clients
figure out the real cost of acquisition, to figure out,
you know, are we better off getting a twenty thousand
(34:32):
dollars case from you know, Facebook, or are we actually
better off getting a ten thousand dollars case from pay
per click. And maybe the ten thousand dollars case from
pay per click is actually more profitable than the twenty
thousand dollar case from face. Anyway, let's just say, so
(34:53):
you take the take you want to make a million
dollars to see the chief financial officer crunches and numbers
pre rejects it out. And let's just say, for purposes
of this example, that the firm's going to run out
of twenty percent net operating income, which means the firm
got to gross five million dollars, right, And let's say
that the blended average case value is I'm just making
(35:13):
this up five thousand dollars. So five million dollars divided
by five thousand dollars means the firm's got to be
able to open and close and get paid for a
thousand cases a year. Right now, we say a thousand
cases a year. Great, So what does it take to
open and close and get paid for a thousand cases
a year? And again I'm just using five thousand dollars
(35:36):
as a number I pulled out a year. Whatever the
number is is what it is. And we figure out that, Okay,
the average attorney in your firm, in your practice area,
because of how well you've created your processes and your
systems and your procedures, maybe that attorney I'm just going
to make it up, can can handle one hundred cases
a year, right, Well, a thousand cases a year. If
(35:58):
the average attorney can hand one hundred cases a year,
so we take a thousand, divide it by one hundred,
means we need ten attorneys. Right. Well, let's take a
look at this. Do we have ten attorneys? Oh? No,
look at that. We have five attorneys? All right, So
should we dial the marketing all the way up to
(36:19):
a five million dollar run rate? Or should we dial
the marketing up to maybe a seven million dollar run
rate and get busy on recruiting before we run out
of capacity? Right? These are the kinds of conversations that
a chief financial officer. These are the kinds of conversations
(36:39):
that a management accountant will have with a law firm,
a financial accountant, which is what most CPAs are. Only
a financial accountant. Again, as I said, they're just going
to say, how much did you generate last year, how
much did you spend last year, here's the profit, here's
your tax bill, And maybe they throw you a few
(37:01):
crumbs with some really simple, dumb, dumb, most basic of
basic tax ideas. Oh, why don't we do a home office.
I mean, of course you could do a home office.
Any idiot knows you can do a home office. You know,
you start getting a lot more sophisticated tax strategies when
you're when you're earning two hundred thousand dollars a year
(37:22):
out of your firm. You ought to have a dedicated
tax strategist. I promise you they will work for free.
Imagine that, a tax strategist, like, my services are free.
Just so we're clear, my services are free. Right because
you give me a dollar, I give you back five dollars.
(37:43):
What did it cost you to work with me? Nothing? Right?
A good tax strategist, and I don't sell tax strategy services.
We have a tax strategy workshop, but I don't do
tax strategy services, so I'm not like pitching that a
good tax strategy. It's free, right because you're going to
(38:04):
invest five or ten thousand dollars for them to do
a tax strategy for you, and they're going to save
you twenty thousand dollars. Well, what did that really cost you? Nothing? Anyway?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, I feel like and we're just about out of time,
but I want to make sure because we barely scratch
the surface on what you offer. So if we can,
if we can wrap up this episode.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Maybe show them how to make an extra ten percent.
We've showed at least three ways to make an extra
ten percent at this point.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yes, so more value than you even promised in the beginning.
But the thing that I don't I want everybody on
this podcast to hear because I hopefully you'll come back,
because I feel like there's so much more that we
can talk about. But you you said something to me
before we fired up the mics, was that people work
their way into and.
Speaker 8 (38:52):
Out of your system, your your your your business, right,
if you could explain that, because one of the things
that I've seen a lot more over the last two
to three years is these fractional CEO, fractional COO, fractional CMO.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
And this is really something that you really cover all
those bases, but it's not something that you implement all
at once. So if you wouldn't mind just really kind
of explaining the work how someone would work their way
into and out of your services.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, so first off, let me say we have a
waiting list. We've had a waiting list for the better
part of two years. So this isn't like the high
pressure tactics, right. The way the way that someone begins
working with us is they go to the website and
they just start downloading some resources. They sign up for
some webinars. If you want to come out to a
live workshop or two, we'll invite you out to a
(39:43):
live workshop. You can meet hundreds of our members, you
can take some free free classes we'll give you. We're
just here. We could share tons and tons of stuff.
We're not going to run out of awesomeness, right, we
got we got loads of awesomeness. And I say we,
I mean I've got one hundred employees, I've got a
thirty million dollar business. Might I get way too much credit.
(40:05):
I got an amazing team of superstars who make me
look like a rock star every day, and I and
I get get a I get a disproportionate amount of
the credit because I'm the front man. But the point
I'm making is that's how you get in. The way
you get in is just start taking advantage of stuff.
And if it resonates with you, great, you'll want more.
(40:25):
If it doesn't resonate with you, you know it'll help you anyway. Then,
at some point, when the time is right, usually you'll
be on a waiting list and you'll get a call
to say a spot will be opening up, do you
want it? And then you'll usually start off by working
with us as your CEO, your chief executive officer, the
chief executive officer of your business right and it will
(40:49):
help you put together your business plan and your marketing plan,
and your sales plan, and your staffing plan, and your
basic you know, processes and systems and procedures, basic budget,
basic financial projections, all the stuff we just talked about.
And then typically around five hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand
dollars in gross revenue for most law firms, you typically
(41:11):
at that point need a chief operating officer, and we
need to then, you know, build better processes, better systems,
better procedures, so you can start to staff up and
scale up your operations. Right now, you've got a system's
driven business instead of a business that's fueled by your sweat.
(41:31):
And typically once you get that in place, BOOM is
going to go to a million, million and a half
dollars and around a million, seven hundred and fifty million dollars.
That's typically where we have to install the chief financial
officer because at that point it's just too easy to
lose one hundred thousand dollars in a seven hundred or
a million dollar law firm. Right and the chief financial
officer allows us to make better decisions, quicker decisions, more
(41:55):
confident decisions, more rational decisions. Data driven decision making leads
to smarter decisions, better decisions, all the things I just said. Well,
you get to around a million and a half dollars
in revenue and your law firm around a million and
a half to two million dollars in gross revenue is
going to start to outgrow our chief operating officer program,
(42:18):
and so we're going to help you hire, train, manage
on board and support your first professional legal administrator, So
a chief operating officer and a professional legal administrator, they're
the same thing. In the business world, they're called coos.
In the legal industry, they're called professional legal administrators. Same difference,
(42:40):
And that's typically going to be one hundred and fifty
to two hundred thousand dollars a year position, which is
why you typically wait to a million and a half
or two million dollars before we bring that person on board.
Then we get to around three million dollars and at
that point you got to bring the CFO in house.
Right at that point, our fractional timeshare CFO service, it's
(43:00):
designed for you to outgrow it. And then you bring
in the full time professional CFO one hundred and fifty
two hundred thousand dollars, you know, out of three million
dollar firm, and then you get to abound seven million,
ten million, and at that point you got to make
a decision about kind of like what do you want
to be when you're growing, right, and some people decide,
I want to be the CEO of my ten million
(43:23):
dollar firm and grow up to twenty thirty fifty million dollars,
and other people say you know what, I don't want
to be the CEO of my ten million dollar firm.
I want to maybe go back to practicing law, but
only taking the kind of cases that I love taking.
Or I want to start a SEP, a completely separate business,
(43:43):
or I want to, you know, go live my life,
whatever they want. The point of making is it's a
very personal decision. There's no there's no formula. Because you're
a human being, you're a unique individual, and so we
got to help you make a plan for how you're
going to make them out of your one unique, precious
life and make your law firm serve that life, rather
(44:07):
than prescribing, like here's our fourteen point plan for how
you're gonna do this, and you get to this, and
then you do that, and then you do that, and
then you do this, and here's this ratio. And you're
a human being, right, You're not a machine, You're not
a thing. But the point that you're asking is our
service is designed for law firms to grow into it,
(44:27):
and then for law from owners to grow out of it.
And then, you know, typically they get to ten million
dollars and they some of them stick around, and they
want us to keep being their CEO. Some of them
decide to be the CEO of their own and they
still stick around because they love the community.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, that's great, and I would encourage anybody to do
a little bit more digging. You've got so many resources
out there, and if we could just finish right and
we're gonna put all those in the show notes. But
if you can give somebody the first step, because there
are there are so many resources between books and website,
If somebody is curious to a little bit more, what
what's the first place you'd point them towards.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I would say the easiest thing to begin with is
go to the podcast called Profit First for Lawyers and
just listen to the podcast, right, And if you absolutely
hate what you hear on the podcast and you think
we're a bunch of a holes and you hate everything
we say and you hate the way we say it,
(45:24):
and you do want nothing to do with it, it's
not going to get any better after that, right. So,
so that's a really easy way to kind of like
dip your toe in and see if we're maybe what
you want. Buy the book Profit First for Lawyers, go
to Amazon and buy it, read it. It will definitely
I guarantee you it will help you make more money.
That is, there's no doubt about that. Read the book,
(45:49):
start and you'll start, you'll start discovering resources. And if
you want to and if you want to come out
and come to one of our live quarterly meetings as
my guest, if you want to come to one of
our workshops, We've got dozens of workshops that we run
every quarter for members only. We don't sell these workshops.
This is a member's only workshop environment. But if you
want to come out as a guest, you know, we'll
(46:10):
be happy as a courtesy to you, Eric and the
show to extend a limited number obviously not everyone, but
a limited number of just courtesy imitations and check it out.
And you know, we're not in a rush. Let's get
to know each other. Most of our members have been
with us for I mean, we got people who've been
with us for ten years, eight years, seven years. I
(46:32):
mean we're looking for long term relationships, not just like
we've been through it all, been around. I've been around.
You know, get the reference, you get it, you get it.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
I'm assuming this is a you know type.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Of Okay, I've been around, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, Well, that's a good way to take a flamethrow
it to this place. Come on, I thought it was
some mob movie but sent to a woman close because
he's been in so many mob movies, so I was adjacent.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Hello to my little friend that one.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
I know.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
You see, John, you're not gonna like doing business with us,
But if you like this and you like Star Trek references, well.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I think entertaining and making more money is there's there's
there's nothing wrong with either of those two, so do
them both is quite a bit of value. But our John,
thank you for your time today. This has been a
It's really good for me myself because I, like I said,
I went through your book and I wanted to hear
from you some of the other, you know, fine points
that you put on this and I would encourage anybody
(47:41):
to take those first couple of steps. Look into the
show notes. I'll have our guy put that podcast that
you mentioned in the show notes. So it makes it
real easy for somebody to just roll right into that one.
So thanks again. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
I appreciate having having the opportunity to be on your show.
I value the opportunity and I hope I made a
contry for you and your audience.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
Market My Market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com
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