Why Change Fails at the Top: Executive Peer Groups with Tom Fafinski

What if the smartest move you can make as a leader is to become deliberately lazy? Host Mark Altman and Tom Fafinski, founder of EPiC Peer Groups, unpack why change fails at the top and how executive peer groups produce the growth most owners try to force by working harder.

Tom Fafinski has built and sold two law practices and now runs EPiC Peer Groups, where member firms have averaged 186% revenue growth and 634% profit growth over five years. His edge isn't working harder. It's giving up the parts of the business that define him, handing the wins to other people, and shifting from doer to reviewer.

Mark pushes Tom on the real reason owners can't let go; it's not time, it's identity. The fear that someone on your team will become better than you at the thing you've always been known for. The two unpack how to coach belief systems instead of tasks, why the best leaders look more like Bill Belichick than Tom Brady, and how to build a team that tells you the truth instead of feeding you an AI-style echo chamber of "great question!"

Inside the episode:

• Niches to Riches: how Tom escaped a miserable 30-person firm by killing services and narrowing focus, then rode the hockey-stick growth that followed
• The Do Not Do List: the one-page discipline he uses to stop spending time on work that doesn't move the business
• The Spectrum Between Adventure and Fear: where every employee really sits, who you should never hire, and why your best people want ownership more than a bigger paycheck

Plus, the loneliness of the top job, why vulnerability and "laziness" are the same skill, and the science that says writing your commitments down is what stops you from rationalizing your way back to comfortable.

For more information, visit http://mindsetgo.com, email info@mindsetgo.com or call 978-793-1159.

Estate planning firm owners curious about EPiC Peer Groups can reach Tom at tom@epicpeergroup.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Most CEOs think change fails because the organizations resist it. It doesn't. Change fails because the person at the top often had no one to pressure test the plan before it was executed. Welcome to iCommunicate. I'm Mark Altman, founder of Mindset Go, and your host. My guest knows this from both sides of the table. He's built and sold two law practices. Tom Favinsky is the co-founder of Epic Peer Groups and Virtus Law, a Minneapolis estate planning firm. The firm owners in Epic's benchmarking program have averaged 186% annual revenue growth and 634% annual profit growth over the last five years. I mean, digest that for a minute because I don't know what they're drinking. I want to have a drink of that though. Whatever it is pretty much communicate.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I tell you what it is. They're drinking from the fountain of laziness. And I kid you not. We got to ignore that. Fundamental to really accelerate is you've got to become kind of lazy and find other people to do the stuff that you're doing and empower them. And then you sit back and you change your role from a doer to a reviewer, and um things explode. But I mean, at the core, you kind of got to be lazy. And you were talking about resisting change. That's the change that people have a hard time with.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, it's a great point. I I guess I want to clarify is it lazy? What's the difference between lazy or delegating?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, so I I say lazy for shock value. Um, but when so I it when somebody says, you know, I I want to do peer group, but I just don't have the time. I I don't know where I would do it. Like, that's exactly why you need to do peer group, because you should you should have an abundance of time as a leader of a of a real enterprise. It's not an enterprise if you're the one that's you know muddled in the day-to-day of every aspect of it, you know. So laziness is kind of a shock value term.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Understood. Understood. Tom, you know, on the on the most recent podcast I did, I was I was speaking with someone, and I said that if I could get everybody in the world in business to ask one question every day, the question I would have them ask is, what's in the way? And when I think about what you're talking about right there, yeah, you know, it's either they're too busy or maybe people won't execute the way I execute and letting go of control and so on and so forth. So what is it, if you could pinpoint in your experience in working with this group, these groups, what is it that if you could pinpoint really the biggest thing of all, is it time? What else is it?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Uh you mean what when they are struggling with something or when they're succeeding?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Well, when they're struggling to let go, you know, when they're struggling to let resisting change.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

What's this? Yeah, yeah. It is they're they're uncertain. Um, they they are uh they fear loss of their identity, um, and they fear probably embarrassment that other people will become better than they are at parts that they're supposed to be, you know, but a big part of it is identity, actually. You know, it's like that's who they are. Um, I I remember back in the early 2000s, I had I was approached with an offer where I would leave the practice of law and um go into the financial world, and it was a very appealing offer. I financially I probably should have taken it, but when it came right down to it, my identity is I'm I'm a lawyer, you know, that's who I am. I don't want to stop being that. And if you muddle that with being the owner of the business, it's like okay, well, I'm the owner of this business. I can't stop being the guy that answers or gal that answers the question about what's the next move for sales and marketing, or like I'm I'm pretty good at sales, I stink at lead lead uh generation. I mean, I my lead generation technique is I meet really trusted advisors and I and I you know show them the stuff that we can do, and then they refer people to me. And that's all that's great, but I I don't know how to go B2C. Um, so if I want to go B2C, I have to hire somebody to go B2C. And when people are are uh resistant to that, like there's gonna be somebody else that knows more about a topic in my business than I do.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Um so Tom, I want to ask you there's two things that came to mind as you were saying that. First of all, let's go to the last thing you just said that people could know more than me and the insecurity around that. You know, one of the things I share with with the companies I work with a lot is how do you coach mindset? How do you coach belief systems? Right? So that's a belief system, like that people are gonna become better than me, and where where do I fit and how is my identity, as you said, impacted? So, how do you you're dealing with someone like that in your peer group? How do you coach them off a belief system? Because that's what it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

And and I suffer from uh, you know, the I'm not a I mean, you're a coach, I'm a little bit of a coach, I'm a lot of a mentor, I'm a bit of a trainer, and I'm one hell of a consultant. I'll tell you what to do. That's great. Um, if you're in my space anyway, uh but you know, to really be a good leader, you gotta be a great, great coach. Um, and you know, you you think about uh the career longevity of uh Bill Belichick. No, Tom Brady was a great player, right? But Bill Belichick was a great coach. I know you're you're probably a patriot. I'm just guessing.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

You're paving your way to my heart right now, Tom. Like you're doing a good job.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, but I mean it's truly, truly uh Tom Brady learned how to be a great quarterback by being coached by Bill Belichick. And you know, so many entrepreneurs want to be Tom Brady. But the answer to longevity and and in and really scaling is to be Bill Belichick. Because Tom Brady wouldn't have been, he wouldn't have been great if he didn't have the other resources around him if the defense wasn't there, if the receivers weren't there. Um, so that you know, and I struggle with that part too, and I shouldn't, I absolutely shouldn't, because coaching is really leading with questions. And you know, the whole lawyer thing is, you know, in law school is all about Socratic questioning. You learn through questions, and that's what an owner has to do. They have to sit back and figure out how they can help somebody discover themselves. The peer groups are really great for accountability, uh, to make sure you're on track, to uh work with other people who have been similarly situated and figure out how they got their team members there. Um, but it is um, yeah, I mean, you got to be a great, you gotta be a great coach.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Well, so let's go with what you said, because I think Bill Belichick actually is a very polarizing figure in terms of, and there's a specific area I want to go here that what I actually loved, and I don't know if this will change how people think of me, but what I loved about Bill Belichick is boy, the second he found a loophole, he would try to exploit the heck out of that loophole. And for me, when I think of CEOs running companies, the thing I think about is if you step back, if you're not the smartest person in the room anymore, and if you empower those people, you're doing whatever it takes. Like that to me is a form of do whatever it takes to be successful, win, be strategic. So that's the angle that I really like about Bill Belichick. And I think CEOs, I think that's a blind spot, right? Because if you looked at it that way, why not, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Right, right, exactly. And and and the and I'm sure Bill would empower people around him to search for those loopholes, right? And then and then when they and then when they discovered it, he all he allowed them to own it. And there's something about getting your team members to have the idea rather than you have the idea because now they own it, they own it, and and you know the part about peer groups that I think is really cool is they you get to a spot where you say, Okay, this is what it's gonna be, and you have your kind of decision that's there, but then the peer group challenges challenges you to take this what are the next steps to implement that decision. And and business leaders should do the same thing with their with their their team members, they go on this retreat type of thing, and they come to an agreement on stuff, and everybody's like vocal vocalizing the agreement. Lots of times, they're just kind of parroting what the owner has said, um, and being in a you know, oh yeah, yeah, that sounds great, let's do that. But it it doesn't ever get off that agreement stage.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Well, I gotta tell you, Tom, you just made me think of something, and I have an analogy for you, and that is that I've been joking with people lately that when you use AI, it is if you if you pick AI's brain for really simple stuff, it's the ultimate self-esteem builder, right? Like you put a question into AI and like, oh, great question, you know, constantly trying to reinforce. And I feel like the analogy there is it's almost like how do you create a team around you that isn't going to be the AI echo chamber and self-esteem builder? And so to me, right, that centers around, and I'm curious how this comes up in your groups, that that centers around the ultimate superpower and leadership, which is psychological safety, which is creating a space where people will feel comfortable speaking their truth and telling you maybe what you don't want to hear. So I'm just curious, how does that does psychological safety come up in the in your groups? And do you think you're you're you're the leaders are uh that's a strength for them?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yes, it is. Um, and sometimes it comes up because in the pure group, they'll have like their uh their integrator involved, you know, in the EOS world, you know, another owner involved, and the the group will take the side of the integrator and challenge the visionary in what's happening. And and uh that is and and that and the integrator feels safe now because they've got this consensus around the room that what they're feeling is exactly an issue that needs to be addressed. Uh you know, visionaries they the or the you know bus the true business owner, you know, maybe there are other partners involved, but the majority owner, whatever, they um they make decisions a lot based on the revenue and profits because it has a direct impact on them as individuals, whereas the other folks don't. They they're looking at it more about the health of the organization. So I think there's an opportunity to have that check in peer groups, especially, to have that kind of checkpoint where the owner doesn't bully the team into something because they're fascinated with uh the impact on immediate EBITDA. And long term long term, it probably won't uh be good for EBITDA if they stay that way. But I've we've seen that a lot in our peer groups, and and it and it's kind of it's kind of a good thing for the owner to hear the the truth spoken from by his peers.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

For sure peers. Yeah. I I find that there are certain aspects of being an executive that the true cost is very hard to quantify. For example, um, one of the things that I always find is when you start talking about culture, for example, you know, culture doesn't have a direct attribution to the bottom line. It's got all kinds of tentacles attaching to the bottom line, but it's not like you can say, well, if I improve culture, we're gonna immediately make five million dollars more. So my question for you is when you look at the cost of the expression being lonely at the top, and you and you look at that isolation, loneliness at the top, if you had uh an executive say to you, or CEO say to you, Tom, how do I quantify the cost of resisting that? It's kind of a it's a it's a hard argument to make for an exact cost, don't you think? It is.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

And you know, you can't vent or explore downward um with some things. Some some things you can, but so you know, there are certain things you just can't explore downward. Um, you don't you don't want your team to get worried. Um you could talk to your spouse about it, but one of the things about being a business owner is they understand your uncertainty. Uh, and and if you share too much, um like I I remember back around 2000, I had a my practice, I had a law firm, we had like almost 30 people, and I was miserable. We were doing everything that came through the door, and and I'm just trying to supervise these lawyers, and I was sitting down with my wife, and I'm much younger at the time, you know, it's 26 years ago, and I said, I don't know if I can do this for six more months because I'm just miserable. And um, you know, that scared her. And it was unfair of me to scare her like that, but it did. What what turned what ended up happening was then that's when we I said, Hey, listen, I can't do this. Um, so we've got to narrow our focus and go, you know, the phrase niches to riches, and that's when we did we, you know, we we serve two client types. We serve MSPs, managed service providers, and we serve um uh mid to higher net worth estate planning clients, um, many of whom are MSP owners because it's a very lucrative business. Um, and you know, it was a it was the transition was scary for the family, you know, a couple of years where the revenue was down, but then it just it was the right decision and had the hockey stick growth afterwards. But you can't burden your family with it. Uh you can't talk, you can you god forbid, you can't go to a competitor and say, hey, I'm struggling with this. What do you think? You know, your competitor is gonna be like, What? You know, uh, and then you don't know if it leaks into the market then. So peer groups are a safe place to talk to people who are identical to you, just not geographically near you.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

So, Tom, let me ask you a question. It's a two-part question. Let me ask you the simple, close-ended part first. Would you consider yourself a vulnerable person? Probably not. I I wish I was, but uh probably not. So is it is it is the reason I'm asking, because my second question was going to be I don't think attorneys are tr uh typically attributed with the with the characteristic of being vulnerable. And I think a lot of what we're talking about so far on this podcast is is being vulnerable, right? Is is being that and so I'm curious, you were just vulnerable right there. I I mean you just said like that's not really a strength of mine necessarily. So I'm just curious, uh, do you see vulnerability as a critical attribute to these CEO, knowing that one of the ways you overcome change is there's such an element of I don't know what I don't know, and admitting that. So I'm just curious where vulnerability falls into play for you here.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Well, maybe that's another way of saying laziness, because you gotta be you got to be vulnerable enough to give up the head, the head seat in sales. You gotta be vulnerable enough to give up, or maybe or maybe not sales, maybe it's marketing, right? Maybe it's finance, maybe it's HR, maybe it's the the production of whatever it is your business puts out. Um if you're if if you own that and that's part of who you are and part of who your confidence is, you gotta you gotta find a way to give it up. Maybe keep one or two that you're best at. Um we have this exercise we call it uh do not do list. I'm a paperless guy, so if you saw my desk right now, you would see no paper. That's great. It makes me nervous to have paper there. Um, but when I'm feeling overwhelmed and I'm not having a lot of free time, I put a pad of paper on my desk with a pen, just like a notepad, and on the top, in caps, I put do not do, and I go through my day and and list the things that I did that I shouldn't be doing that somebody else could do at $30, $40, $50 an hour, something like that. My my hourly rate is $610 an hour when I'm a lawyer. So if I am previewing my emails, I'm paying somebody $610 an hour to do that. Um so I got, you know, I've had I've worked at it. It's a more of a discipline than it is a natural uh a natural instinct or whatever, but I have turned over my inbox to my assistant to preview so that I'm only working on the most important things. I you know delegate work, and it is vulnerable. You want to be the best at everything you're doing, but you gotta you gotta expose it a little bit. I wonder go you please keep going. I didn't mean to cut you off. Oh no, you just you have to be willing to let others contribute, willing to to, you know, um well, you know, here's here's the thing about employees. There's they have and this and this was a recruiter explained. One of the great things about being a peer group is you hear opinions from all different industries because I'm in an industry-specific peer group uh with Epic with estate planning, and then I'm in a non-industry specific one through an organization locally here called Allied Executives. Um but there's a there's a spectrum, there's adventure and there's fear, and every employee falls somewhere in that spectrum. If they are if they're the ones that want the high base and are willing to forego a bonus, and they are working at big companies or working for government where there's civil servant protection, they uh civil servant, they are on the fear side, they want certainty, they don't want to have risk. And then if you look at you know, folks like you and I probably we're way over here on the adventure side. You know, we need to have that juice in our life, you know, we need that energy, and so the employees that work for you, they're not gonna be on the adventure side, they're not gonna be on the fear side. Because as a smaller organization, if they truly were motivated totally by fear, they would go work for you know the one of the big Fortune 500s or or you know, the government or something like that. So they have adventure in their life, it's just not what's driving them, but they're not all the way over to here. And in fact, I don't think we should hire people that are all the way over to here. We can get in here this range and kind of give them a share of like phantom equity and synthetic equity where they feel like they're the owners, and maybe even a minority partnership. But we got to realize that the people that we hire in smaller organizations under 20 million in revenue, they truly are seeking some adventure, just not necessarily full adventure. Um, so you find that spot, they're there because they want something different in the world. Normally, it's not economics, normally it has something to do with like owning a particular area. They they want to be the person that like I bring on younger attorneys and I'm working on you know really complicated succession plans, and they love the fact that they're involved, and they're not motivated by the money. I mean, they you gotta pay them, but they're not motivated by the money, otherwise, they would have gone to a much larger firm. So if we figure that out and we realize, okay, I have to be vulnerable enough to give up some stuff and give it to somebody else so that they have adventure in their life, so that they have excitement, so that they're important. I am losing a little bit of my identity when it comes to marketing, for instance. Like I've long since learned like I'm not good at lead generation. It's been a long time since I've done that. You know, I'm good at trusted advisor relationships, but not lead generation. So it would be silly of me to launch a you know pay-per-click or SEO or something and be the guy that's managing that. I don't know anything about that stuff, right? So to give it up to and to give the success to that person too, and to incent them to be successful. So that kind of vulnerability where you're losing a piece of your identity and giving it to somebody else so that they are greater, that's the type of laziness I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah, I think it's interesting, right? Because and this is, I don't know. I I can't say whether this is an embellishment or not, frankly. I mean, I typically when I communicate and coach others to communicate, I stay away from absolute language or absolute statements. And I will say that I don't know too many CEOs right now across the country who aren't asking themselves the question, am I keeping up enough with AI? And so whatever your polarizing view, not you, Tom, but whatever a person's polarizing view is an AI, that's fine. But the reality is virtually every CEO in the country is thinking about it and stressed about it and questioning about it. And so I say that because I just thought of something, Tom, as as we're talking about this, is that I wonder that if if you're resistant to change, do you have to embrace change? Don't you have to embrace change to accelerate change? Right? Like, how can you accelerate change without embracing change?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

So there is different types of change. Like I'm a person that doesn't really like change that much. Um, but when I talk about change, I'm talking about adding a new service line or moving to a new geography. Um, the the tiny incremental changes of, you know, like I remember when we layered probate, which is kind of a natural thing for anybody that does estate planning to do estate administration and probate. When we layered that, I wasn't excited about it, but that's not really change, that's more, you know, incremental migration uh type of thing. Um so I I personally I don't like change, but I don't look at it as AI as a change, I look at it as like oh like a calculator, like uh and I read this article, Mark, and I wish I could remember where I could, and I'd searched for it too. I should probably use AI to try to find it. But it was an article about how we are losing uh technology because of technology, we're losing our soul, and you know, that it's terrible for our society, and you know, it's gonna lead to these, you know, terrible changes. And at the end, and I'm probably getting this wrong, but which is probably why I'm not finding it. But at the end, it was an article from like 1912, and it dealt with the calculator something like or 1930 or something, and it dealt with the calculator. And when you're reading it, you're thinking, oh, this is about AI, this is about AI, this is about AI. And it wasn't, it was something. So I I just look at AI as a tool that will help us be better and accelerate uh what we can. Do you look at it as a fundamental change?

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah, so I see this a little differently than you do. I I look at although I I feel like the direction you're going, I like. So I have an expression when it comes to change is most people struggle with change. And the expression is to make change palatable for a lot of people, you have to shift from what I call a daunting to doing mindset. So you take it really feels really big and make it small, make it as you like transitional, which is what you're talking about, I feel like. For me, the way I the way I look at change, Tom, is I say to people that if you're asking a human being to do something they're not doing at all, not doing consistently, or not doing well, that's change. And because whether it's behavior change, individual, organizational change, whatever it is, I mean, let's face it, Tom. I mean, there's a lot of people, I don't know about you, but if I have plans to go to dinner with you Saturday night, and at the last minute you cancel and you're like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to do that. Well, even like that's that's that could be jarring for people because it's just a change of plan. So I think change, I try not to minimize change even at the levels you're talking about, because I just find it's just so hard for so many at all levels of a company from executive on down.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah. So you're you're coaching your folks to try to like so t tell me more about how you that translates into your coaching of your customers, class.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Yeah, thank you for asking. So so I use what I call the stages of change model. And the stages of change model has I'm just gonna give the crash course right now, but it has five stages of change. The lowest level, and and Tom, visualize a zero to 10 scale. Okay. So if you're at zero on a zero to ten scale, you're at what we call pre-contemplative, you're not even thinking about the change. You as the CEO can sit and make the most compelling, influential presentation of why we need to do this, right? But if I don't see the value in it, if I'm not bought in, if I have change fatigue and like, oh, we've done this before, it's never gonna work, then you're at zero pre-contemplative. The second stage, moving up the ladder, is contemplative, which means you're thinking about it, you're not ready for it, you're not ready to take action, but you're at least thinking about it. The third stage is called preparation, and preparation is on a zero to ten scale, like that five, six range, it's where you start to become open-minded, to put it in simple terms. It's when you're like, okay, tell me more, Tom. What are you thinking about here? Why are you thinking about this? Because I'm I'm really starting to consider it and detaching from my fixed mindset and rigidity. And then the fourth stage is what's called action. And that is the stage where people are ready to implement the change and do the tactical and strategic things that would make the change successful. And the final of the stages of change is the 10 on the zero to 10 scale, which is maintenance, which is one of the biggest blind spots I see. Because, in my experience, if you are coaching someone or consulting for someone and they're making progress and they're getting they're getting buy-in, but then they have a setback and something happens where they go backwards, maintenance is what prevents that. Maintenance is the proactive plan to have key milestones and check-ins so they don't. So that's my methodology. And I always, I always start out this the the real simple answer to your question is when I'm gauging someone's change readiness, the first question I often ask them is on a zero to 10 scale, what's the likelihood you're open to this change? And based on their answer, is kind of the design for how I do change management, change communication, the approach.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Okay. Well, very good. Yeah. It's it's really it sounds a bit like every diet I've been on. I can't get past seven.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

I I get there on the agreement, I get there on starting, and then well, I'm curious, I'll share something with you, and I'm curious your your your perspective on it. Because I think that's I think that's really very common for most. And I think we get to a place where doing something makes sense. We like we know it's the right thing to do and it's sensible, but getting yourself over the hump to actually execute on what you know is the right thing to do, to your point, yeah, is incredibly hard for people.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

It is, and and peer groups are wonderful, wonderful for that. And uh, you know, I went through um so I I mentioned diet, and I was I was kidding, but but honestly, one of my peer group members convinced me to go on a that convinced me to investigate the whole food plant-based diet from a health perspective, and um so you know, I did, and I was like, you know what? He's this is right, this is the right path to go. Um, you know, be totally plant-based. And that was three and a half years ago. And one of the reasons why I stay on it and am able to stay on it because every quarter I see this guy and we check in with each other, he's been on a lot longer than I am, but the result was you know, all of my numbers went down from a health perspective, my you know, my A1C, my blood pressure, my heart rate, my cholesterol, everything just plummeted, and it's just the right thing to do. But I do need that check-in um to kind of keep that to stay at that 10. And I probably slipped and gone to a little bit of a nine as I eat some processed food sometimes, but but um well, I I want to tell you, first of all, have you ever heard of it?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Just as a side note here, have you ever heard of the app called Yuka Yuka? No, so it's an app that I started using about three months ago. It was a I saw a story on 60 Minutes about ultra-processed foods, which is what led me to, and what it is, Tom, is when you go to the supermarket, you have the app download on your phone and you can scan the barcode on the food you're buying, and it ranks the ultra-processed nature of the food from zero to a hundred. And I gotta tell you, it has changed how I buy food now because there were foods that I'm buying in the organic session section and the healthy section. I'm like, look at me, I'm buying all these, and then I would scan it, and it was like 19 out of 100, 24 out of 100. And it really, it's it's the whole packaging and branding of foods that how it impacts your buying patterns. But I gotta tell you, I highly recommend it. And look, the thing about Yuca is the one point I'd make to our listeners is look, if you go scan um a package of blueberry muffins, well, of course it's gonna be low, like right, like it's it's sweets, it's it's carbs, it's so don't don't like expect the the unrealistic. I mean, so you still can buy some of those foods if you want, but I am just trying to really be mindful of that ultra-processed foods, and I found you's been real helpful.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Oh, good. Have you read the book How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger? I have not. Oh, it's a good book. If if you're in, I mean, if you're interested in longevity and uh and like I want to live, because I you know, I want to live long, but I also want to be active and be able to, you know, golf and hike and and that kind of stuff. And um, so the the how not to die book is a great read. I think it's on Audible too. Um, he's an he's a fascinating guy, does not do it for money. I think he might be out of Boston, actually. Wow. Uh, but he does not do it for um uh everything is nonprofit, his his website is nutritionfacts.org, and it's and it's no corporate sponsorships, and everything goes to chair. I'm sure he pays himself a salary. He's but he's a practicing physician, and he but he really just kind of goes through all the tests um that are uh done across the world from to other people, not him, and talks about how it increases your longevity, reduces risk of cancer and heart disease and stroke and that's great, and diabetes and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Anyway, you you might find that yeah, yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

I made a note of it. Um, all right, Tom, one final thing before we wrap up today. I I think it's a perfect way to tackle this last topic. You know, I my favorite topic probably is have talk about, participate in, facilitate in general is courageous conversations. When I when I speak with executive peer groups, that's typically the topic I often present. And I bring it up because I get a little annoyed and tired of hearing executives throw around the word accountability. Like I feel like it's like, oh, we got to hold our people more accountable. Our leaders aren't holding everybody accountable. Not because it isn't true. I mean, of course, there's elements of truth to it. I get frustrated because I start with personal accountability. And I think that, you know, the whole premise of leading by example is based on looking inward before you blame outward. And I wonder if courageous conversations, we need our executives to start having better conversations with themselves, right? Like forget about anybody else. Start being honest with yourself about what's in the way. And I'm curious, do you feel in your experience that that executives are good at doing that?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Um, I don't think uh business owners, I don't know about executives, but business owners are not so good at looking at themselves. We were talking about Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. And you never heard Bill Belichick, you know, after a particularly bad loss, you know, being at the mic and saying, you know, Tom Brady sucked. He he didn't do what he was supposed to do. You know, you never because that's not that's not what real leadership looks like, you know, and and um so yeah, I mean that in the coaching part, you know, I I think peer groups are great. I think they're great for accelerating results, I think they're great for having accountability for for moving forward towards a commitment that you've made to yourself, uh, you know, where it's tangible and people are people who have no skin in the game are coming back to you and saying, where are you at on that? You said you were gonna do that and you didn't do it. Uh that's really it's good from a mentoring standpoint because you got other people who've been there and done that. It's not the best from a coaching perspective because there's just not enough time. Right. Coaching takes time, you know. It does. And I think that that uh that trait is better served through coaching. That uh because I think the peer group I we compete with coaching on a on a expense uh uh I don't you know the word there's same training type stuff. I do, yeah. Uh but we're really not competitors because coaches teach people how to think differently and then teach them how to get others to think differently. Um whereas the peer group is more like, well, I don't have I don't have time to explain to you why you should have a higher revenue per full-time equivalent. But what you need to do is figure out why your your team is not getting the same revenue per hands in the cookie jar as it did in the last three years, you know, uh and that kind of thing. So yeah, I think that uh I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Well, not only did you, I two two final thoughts. One is I have seen uh no bias. I have seen time and time again that the most successful executives do both, right? They have a peer group and a coach. And the other thing I would say is you made a point, and I don't want to leave this untouched because it was a critical point you made earlier in the podcast about you find most success when you have an accountability partner. That's what we call it, the accountability partner. And that is one of the hugest benefits peer groups. I mean, there's a lot of benefits, but the accountability partner having to look someone in the eye when you were there last month and go, hey, uh this is what I committed to doing. There's that's huge. And by the way, that's not Tom and I making up, that's science. Like that's that's that's science proven over time. That's not like our opinion. So yeah, I think that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

And Tom, I'd I'd love to end up there's a part two where when you write something down, um, because your mind, you're you always want to be the hero in your story, right? Yeah, you always want to be the good guy, right? So when you sit down and say, Okay, this year I want to do the following things, and you and you kind of go through, you know, I want to make this kind of money, I want to add this to my business, um and you don't write it down. What ends up happening then is you look at it later and you kind of rationalize yourself, rationalize to yourself and find a way where you're the hero. Um, I learned I worked on an embezzlement um in 2003, where this guy stole over a million dollars from um my client, and the client was like a brother to him to my client. It was, you know, it was like a brother to him. And um afterwards, you know, we shut it down, we recovered a bunch, we recovered about half the assets, and um you know, he was charged, and part of the deal was he had to explain to us how he stole the money, right? And my client wasn't at a point where he could meet with him. So I was the guy that went and met with him, and I knew the guy really well too, and my kids sat on his lap and all that kind of stuff, and it was crazy what happened. Uh, but he sat down and went through it, and I you know, his his name was Dan, and I'm like, Dan, why'd you do this? I don't get it. And he said, you know, I should have been an owner. And um I know I don't, it was a tech company, and he was like, I know I'm not a I wasn't a tech guy, but I should have been treated as an owner. And um, so I just I took what I think I deserved, and then I stopped when I got there. Like, wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Well, and Tom, how often do we see in the world in general when people don't feel like they're treated the way they deserve to be treated, they take the law into their own hands, right? So that and that's and not just in business, we see that all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

It's absolutely true, right? So there's something about writing it down that makes you accountable to you later on. You go back and you look at it and you say, I wrote this down, this is what I said, I cannot rationalize away from what I wrote down, and and then that whole concept of what gets measured gets done. And now it's now not only is it written down, people are a little reluctant to write it down. Your group forces you to write it down. It's in the meeting notes, it's it's the commitments that you declare at the end of your meeting and get checked in on every time we meet, uh, where the what the status is. So it has this effect where it is forcing you to not forget the stuff that you said you needed to accomplish. Now, maybe it was the wrong stuff, and maybe you pivot, you know, during you know, halfway through, like this isn't working, and through your peer group collaboration, you're you're uh you know able to find a different path, but at least you've written it down. Well, and that's a big part.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yeah, and it's not foolproof, it's a tool, it's it's not foolproof. So, so Tom, final thought today. Could you share um if someone is interested in being a part of Epic, yeah, uh peer groups, just let everybody know as we wrap up how they would go about doing that.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

Oh, sure. Um, so Epic is you you have to be an estate planning law firm uh owner. It had I mean it doesn't have to be exclusively estate planning, but estate planning has to be a big part of what you're doing. Uh and um you just email me at tom at epicpeergroup.com, and that's and if you search my name, it's you know really unusual name, so you're gonna find I think there's a couple of Tom Fafinskys, but not not in Peergroup.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

And and I want to end by saying, you know, I met Tom uh recently, we had a brief conversation before the podcast, and we're full transparency, we don't know each other super well. What I will say in the limited interactions I've had, and I'm sure you can pick this up from the podcast, very authentic guy, um, very straight shooter, communicator. And um I I just feel Tom, I can see why you're really good at what you do both in law and in the epic peer groups. Oh, thanks. Because you you you make conversation comfortable, which is huge. Oh, well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, Tom, thank you so much for joining us for iPhone. Thanks for having me. And on behalf of Tom, I'm Mark Altman. We'll see you next time. Take care. Take care.