It’s not what everyone wants to hear, but it’s what everyone needs to hear.
You’re what is holding your firm back.
Great, y’all fucking hate me… terrible way to begin this, right?
But here’s the thing, have you ever been wrong about something and changed your mind?
I hated cauliflower as a kid. Thought it was gross. Smelled bad. Now guess what… it’s pizza crust, tater tots, rice. I don’t know that I love it, but I eat it multiple times per week in stuff I enjoy. You have examples like that too, right?
Now flip it.
Has someone else been wrong about something and you changed their mind? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
What does that teach us? It’s easier to change ourselves than someone else.
You’re with your employees at most 40 hours a week (hopefully not more). You’re with yourself 24 hours a day like three to four times that amount of time. In theory, you have that much more opportunity to change you.
So congrats, we’re what holds our firm back. We have more control over ourselves. And we have an easier time changing ourselves. So… am I still an asshole?
There are three buckets I want to talk about (feel free to skip any that don’t apply to you):
- True solos
- Beginning growth stage
- Tweaking and trying phase
Tips for Everyone
Personal growth is exponential as you grow your team. The more you scale a team, the more you scale your own growth.
I’m a big fan of mapping out your days, long-term plans broken into segments, those segments on a calendar, and days planned ahead. As you build a team, they can take major projects off your shoulders.
Not sure what your long-term plans should be? Start here:
- How much money do I need to make?
- How much time do I want to work?
- What work do I want to be doing?
Run every personal decision through that framework. If it doesn’t fit, skip it. If it does, schedule it. On the business side, add one more question: does this attract more ideal clients? If yes, move forward. If not, skip it again.
As ideas stack up, prioritize what saves you time. Time saved creates capacity. And look, if cauliflower can become pizza, you can run a successful freaking law firm.
True Solos
At minimum, hire a VA for small tasks. Even if you don’t want to “grow,” this keeps you from being everything.
If you’re flat fee, you earn more by charging more or working faster. If you’re contingency, you earn more by working faster so you can handle more cases. If you’re hourly, your only lever is charging more per hour.
So unless you’re hourly, your job is to maximize your time. Automations, systems, and workflows aren’t optional, they’re essential. Other firms can grow by adding people. If you don’t want to do that (which is completely fine), then you are the growth lever.
Build a network of experts and stay in your lane. Turning down a $3,500 case is hard, but if it requires 40 hours of research just to do it well, it may not be worth it. Saying no to a case is often saying yes to your sanity.
Beginning Growth Stage
This is where you’ve expanded beyond just you. The key question here isn’t habits, it’s systems.
You need to know how everything is done so it can be assigned, tracked, and improved. A system isn’t just what’s done or who does it, it’s the order it’s done in and how it’s tracked. Systems expose bottlenecks, and yes, sometimes you are the bottleneck.
A practical approach: do the task yourself and screen-record it, delegate it, answer questions, refine it, then have the other person screen-record themselves doing it. Transcribe and save it. Now you have video, audio, and written documentation with minimal extra work.
Where you hold the firm back at this stage is by not delegating enough, not delegating the right things, or not growing into your role as a leader. This is a new job. Getting help, a course, consultant, or even a therapist isn’t weakness. Better leadership equals exponential growth.
Tweaking and Trying Phase
This is my favorite phase. You have people, systems, and clients, and now you want more, but intentionally.
This is where you get to try new things: marketing campaigns, A/B testing intake or client experience, experimenting with new practice areas. Earmark specific time, money, and effort, then measure results. If it brings more clients, referrals, or reviews, keep it. If not, tweak it, give it more time, or cut it.
Most failures happen because the foundation wasn’t ready—intake couldn’t handle leads, pricing wasn’t competitive, or systems couldn’t support growth. But sometimes you don’t know until you try.
At this stage, you hold the firm back by not building a true leadership team or by cheaping out so everything still falls on you. The upside is that you finally have money, so do what your clients do and throw money at problems to make them someone else’s job.
So what stage are you in? What did I miss? Is there another way you think you’re holding your firm back?