Last week, I had the honor of speaking at the Maximum Lawyer Conference.
It’s always a blast to get asked to speak, and even cooler when it’s to a group like this, aka my people. Growth-minded law firm owners who are chill. No one brags about who ordered the biggest steak or cares if you flew first class.
So this guy comes up to our LegalEase booth and gives me the best endorsement I have ever heard for us.
“I came to this conference and told myself I wasn’t going to speak to a single marketing person. I was going to skip ALL of them. But you all seem fun, so let’s chat.”
And to be honest, leads are great. But it’s something else when an ideal potential client gets you at your core. We are fun.
That looks like us in Hawaiian shirts giving out High Noons instead of suits, or the suit jacket over a t-shirt look that seems to be common in the industry.
And hey, maybe it doesn’t turn out. But still, he got us and liked us enough to chat among a handful of other great options.
If you missed out on the conference, I’m not going to rehash it. Just come next year. But I did get some great time to sit, think, and pick the brains of some of the best and smartest legal minds across the country. And my takeaway was this: focus more. Do less. But do the right things.
So I present to you a list where you will learn nothing, but remember the most important things.
AKA: The 10 Most Important Things You Forgot
(in no particular order)
1) There are only 2 ways to grow a business: sell more to your clients, or sell to more clients
That’s it. Everything else is window dressing. Honestly, the more you know which one is better for your ideal client, the better you can serve them.
For me, I would rather sell more to my people than find more people. Bonus: I also think this helps us provide better client service because we are focused on keeping you and growing your spend with us, instead of just having a specific churn rate. For example, the percentage of clients you are okay losing every month as you bring in new ones.
2) We are all going to die
This was weirdly a consistent theme during the conference, but it’s true. So stop wasting time on stupid shit. Focus on what actually moves the needle so you have more time, money, freedom, etc. to focus on what truly matters to you.
It might be that money really matters to you. But it’s probably that money gives you options to do what you want.
I think about this a lot, see a previous newsletter about one of my thinking strategies. And look, in a weird way, this is super liberating, right?
Just like no one remembers that one kid who threw up in second grade that one time, everything passes.
So I am a big fan of making money, but using that money to buy time. Time to spend with friends, family, and yourself, instead of being chained to a desk in your office for 80 hours a week.
3) No one wants to give you money
Clients want a problem to go away, an issue to stop being an issue, their life to go back to normal, etc.
Keeping that in mind as you make decisions will really help, especially with your intake process. So much of legal sales is just making things easy for the client and getting out of your own way before they find a reason to go with another firm.
4) Nothing will ever be perfect
This is one of those mantra things you have to keep reminding yourself of. But like number 2, it’s liberating.
You don’t need to read that newsletter 1,000 times before it goes out. If there’s a spelling mistake, fine.
Honestly, if a potential client called and said, “On page blah blah blah of your website you said ‘trail,’ but I think you meant ‘trial,’ so I am going to hire someone else,” would you be disappointed? If that’s their standard, you probably do not want to work with them.
I want to balance this with not letting good get in the way of great. You need the mindset of constant growth, personally and professionally. That’s why realizing it’s never perfect is helpful. You can always do it better, and you should do it better next time.
That’s why clients love hearing you’ve handled cases like this 10,000 times. It’s like going to the doctor. I don’t want to be diagnosed with some rare condition. I want the thing the doctor can do in her sleep that ends with me being fine.
5) If you don’t know where you want to get, you have no idea if you’re going to get there
I usually talk about this in terms of punching an address into your GPS or Apple CarPlay, but it’s the same for your firm.
For a long time, I just wanted more. More cases, more money, more, more, more. And I got it.
Only it was more problems, more headaches, and more debt.
So really figure out the vision for your firm. What do you want it to look like in terms of size, work, and structure? Then make decisions that move you closer to that.
6) What worked yesterday might not work today
This is a good corollary to “but it works for Jane Doe down the street.”
It’s really about your ideal client and your firm’s brand, and merging those two things. Billboards are great when you have the infrastructure to support them. Ads are great when you really understand the message your ideal client cares about. Webinars are awesome when you are good at doing them and get them in front of the right people who don’t want to go back to in-person meetings and free steak.
So you have to keep iterating. Having ideas, trying them, tweaking them, and repeating. See number 4.
7) You need money to stay open
I had the pleasure of happening to catch Marco Brown on a connection flight to the conference, and we got to chat about kids, burgers, guns, etc. It was a blast.
But nothing he has ever said to me has been more impactful than his presentation in 2021 about Rule Number One: get paid.
I don’t care if you want to do pro bono or low bono work. Getting paid by your other clients allows you to do that.
I don’t care how much you believe in the work. The power company, your landlord, Clio, etc. all care about getting paid.
You can’t help anyone if you’re burned out. You really can’t help anyone if you’re closed. So prioritize getting paid. You can always cut a client a break on your terms when they truly need it. That is much easier when everyone else is paying their bills.
8) It’s all your fault
I talk about this a lot, so I won’t belabor it. But even when it’s someone else’s fault, you hired them, trained them or didn’t, assigned the work to them, etc.
And again, it being your fault is liberating because it gives you control to fix it.
9) Nothing gets done if you don’t make time for it to be done
If you want something accomplished, put it on your calendar.
Or here’s a Jordan hack: keep a to-do list, but also calendar two or so hours a week to focus on that list and prioritize the items.
Ideas are worth nothing. Thanks to Tyson Mutrux for that reminder. But it’s 100 percent true. You need execution to see success.
10) People are different
This touches on numbers 3, 4, 6, etc., but seriously.
You are different from other firm owners. I am different from other legal marketing people. Your clients are different from your non-clients and from each other.
As a company, you need to balance systems, processes, and automation with accommodating human differences.
This does not mean bending over backwards for everyone. In fact, it means intentionally weeding out people who are not good fits. For example, if you only care about money and not time, you should probably unsubscribe from my stuff and follow some of the marketing bros. There’s nothing wrong with that mindset. It’s just not the audience I want.
I want to be okay relenting. I want to be okay being open, vulnerable, and failing publicly.
But for clients who are close to ideal fits, you need to make accommodations.
Sometimes that’s physical. If you’re a PI firm, you might have clients who are blind or lost their vision due to an accident. If you’re email-heavy, that matters.
Sometimes it’s not physical. Maybe Mr. Smith needs extra help with technology. Maybe Ms. Doe needs an extra reminder. Maybe the Johnsons don’t work on Thursdays, so that’s the best day to reach them.
So there we go. Hopefully you learned nothing from this newsletter, but still found it to be one of the most valuable.
Keep Reading
For a deeper collection of leadership practices, read 25 Mindset Shifts to Level Up Your Law Firm Leadership, or browse the Leadership & Mindset newsletter archive.