Hello and welcome to another Coffee Sode of. They Don't Teach this in Law School. I'm Charlie Mann of Law Firm Alchemy, and what I want to share with you in this episode is some inside baseball sort of kind of from the mastermind meeting that I hosted earlier this week for other folks in the law firm support and success space, many of whom who are either new to the niche of serving lawyers and law firm owners or who have just newer businesses in the space in general. And it came together because when I launched Law Firm Alchemy last year, one of the things I knew that I should do, following my own principles, was expand my network to both build and rebuild it. I mean, like the great news was is I found out that I had a lot more friends right out the gate in the success space than I thought was possible. You know, take nothing for granted and I also found that I could reach out to people and build connection, and what I decided to do was invite them out to Northern Virginia, where I'm located, and hosted and facilitated a one day mastermind for this awesome group of individuals. Now you may hopefully you've seen the LinkedIn post. If you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, there's a link in the show notes for to change that and we all got together and we talked about both our businesses, but also the profession overall.
Speaker 1:Here's the first thing I'll say. When I say that there are commonalities across all businesses that are related directly to the work done in your law firm, I mean it in these types of businesses, which were predominantly I mean they really are all service businesses. Many of the issues were similar or even the same pricing, attracting the ideal client, value propositions, pricing according to value, setting boundaries with clients, creating communications policies, lead generation, nurture building and nurturing a list. All of these are things that be taught for law firm owners, just like you In this case. However, we all share a common audience of the law firm owners. There's other really important reason that I wanted to bring everyone together, and that's because, collectively, I want to raise the bar and the standard on how law firms are served by people in this success and support space and by working with some of us who have newer businesses, we're hoping to and we are going to raise the bar in that way, and part of raising the bar means understanding what each other does and having a great base of referrals Every single person in that room would agree that all of us were so excited to walk away from that knowing that we had a guy or gal right.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got a gal who. Oh, I got a guy who. We all want to refer folks out to the right provider, to the right need, and we all increased our network that day. Because in the latter and hopefully, if you've heard a past episode, I know you've heard this before, but let me introduce this idea to you now there is the value ladder or the hierarchy of value, of jokingly but also seriously called it man's hierarchy of value, which is four steps. The first step is you get paid for what you do. That's the first way you get paid in life. Second way you get paid and create value in life is for what you know. The next level three is you get paid for who you know. And the last level level four is you get paid for who you are.
Speaker 1:All of us there were investing both in increasing what we know, but definitely increasing who we know. We want to make sure that we are providing the best highly curated resources, the best solutions to the issues facing law firm owners in all Capacities of the practice, and that's really what this was about. You know, we looked at some of the professional trends, such as the potential consolidation in the future of law firms. I will tell you we didn't talk that much really about private equity venture capital. We know that that's a way that's coming, but there's, you know, only so much that gets discussed in one day. We definitely talked about law firm economics and a little bit about profit margins, a little bit about, you know, law firm owners and their experiences with time management, how to communicate with law firm owners, how to set boundaries, but ultimately this is really predominantly about understanding all the firms better understanding all the components that go into law firms and Truly and this, this was core to it Understanding how to best communicate to the needs of you, the law firm owner this is something that happens in marketing across all sorts of industries and professions is difficulty communicating what you do to people who may not have a formal education on it.
Speaker 1:For example, we had a few fractional people in their fractional CFO, fractional CMO, fractional COO, and I'd be willing to bet that there are many listeners who hear that and have some grasp of what that Person would do in the firm. But I would bet that the definition you have is likely a little different from the service that may get delivered. And that's because this fractional C suite is a still growing field for in the law firm success world and Not everyone understands what it can be, what it I don't know should be. And so we talked about how do you communicate, immunicate what it is that you do? You know, in this case of, say, a fractional CFO, is Sometimes that when a fractional CFO gets a call from a law firm owner, that person may be thinking more along the lines of a bookkeeper, accountant with a little bit of professional advice, as opposed to someone who's doing a deep dive analysis of the numbers, helping you set a budget and really being your sounding board on expenses that you have and Almost giving you permission on what you can spend, which really is just the role of the CFO. Hey, we have the budget for that. We don't have the budget for that. Okay, we don't have the budget for that.
Speaker 1:And we need to take from a space. How are we justifying the spend and putting some guardrails on what you're doing in the fractional COO space? That's an area where there's a lot of adaptability. So someone's going to a COO and thinking, oh, this person is just strictly going to do systems and processes. What you might find is that COO operates almost as a chief revenue officer, the CRO, depending on the type of person you're working with. So how do we better communicate that and demonstrate to a firm owner like you the possibilities and potential and the paint points that we solve for More readily, because if you have a better understanding of what it is that each one of these categories Can do for you, it makes it easier for you to hire that person with a lot less friction.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we talked about was the future scaling of these businesses that we all operate, which right now are predominantly built on the individuals knowledge base. And how do we construct businesses that are future-proofed in that, if we are going down the path and some people want to go down the path where they'll scale up a whole lot, and some people are Not looking to do some scaling, at least not yet. And, by the way, this is a really cool thing that we really adapted our language on is the saying not yet or not right now language, rather than being absolutely insane oh, I never want to scale. Instead, it's I don't want to scale right now and that's a perfectly acceptable answer. I can understand that we can still challenge it, but I can understand that answer rather than just being absolutely insane yeah, never gonna want to scale. Oh, really, you would never want to run a ten million dollar business. I think maybe there's a part of you that be interested in that.
Speaker 1:But if we're thinking about the future and we're thinking about a knowledge-based business, then how do we start getting that knowledge out of our heads today so that way, if slash win in the future, we decide to bring on another individual or individuals to deliver those services perhaps a fractional services in my case, could it be future coaches, mastermind facilitators, etc. How do we start getting that information out of our heads now, even if we have a very small team, so that way we are prepared for that in the future, creating the knowledge base today such that it will benefit us tomorrow. By the way, one of the side benefits of creating a knowledge base even if you don't hire another service provider for quite some time Wouldn't all your other staff members benefit from knowing what your thought processes are and how you serve your clients in your own law firm and some of the decision-making devices you have accumulated over time so that way they can be better decision-makers, they can make decisions that are in greater alignment with you. So we talked a lot about that. How do we set up our businesses to take advantage of future opportunities if and when they present themselves to us? Truly what I wanted to see and wanted to be able to do, and for everyone who is in that group who was there, my hope is all of us walked away knowing that we can better serve law firm owners, who we all agreed. By the way, it is interesting, enjoyable work to work with law firm owners.
Speaker 1:I think what might surprise everyone listening to this is the utter lack of negativity about the profession, and I say that because I know sometimes lawyers. In my experience, law firm owners can feel judged by people who are not lawyers, who are working within the profession someone like myself I'm not a lawyer they can feel judged by it, and because there's, you know, all the annoying stats about trust with lawyers and stuff, there's a lot of erroneous assumptions built on those statistics. But I will tell you that the people in there did not have a negative view of lawyers, of law firm owners. Are there a couple of eccentricities within the profession? Yes, but you find that in literally every single profession.
Speaker 1:I think we all agree that working with law firms is a delight. We're working with people who serve others, who have clients of their own in addition to so. They're not only our clients, but through the work that we do, we can help better serve the law firm's clients, and that's something that is often missed in the discussion is how much service providers like us are delighted the fact that we are within this ecosystem serving the end user of your law firm, which are the clients, and we enjoy that. All the people in the room enjoy that and appreciate the positive effect we can have on that ecosystem overall. So it is a treat for us to work with law firm owners and, of course, a lot of the problems that we were talking about in our own businesses or opportunities look and sound similar to the work that you're doing in your own law firm. So that's what went on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, obviously I'm not going to share anything that was deeply private out in a public forum, but I do know that this is something that I will continue to do is to bring together not only this group but additional folks in the future who serve law firm owners and if you know someone or you are that someone who is interested in this type of experience, reach out. I'm always looking to build the network, to build new friendships, new relationships and collectively generate fantastic opportunities for all of us. As long as you buy into that core premise of I'm in it because serving law firms is exciting, interesting work and, for anyone who has a jaded view of law firms and lawyers, anyone who gets in the room is like, oh God, lawyers, am I right? If that's you don't reach out. Okay, we're not going to jive, because I love this profession. I love the people that I'm working with and the work that they do and everything that comes with it is exciting and interesting to me. So, as long as you agree with that core premise and you love serving law firms, there's space at the table okay. So feel free to reach out. And, yeah, I appreciate everyone who is there. I appreciate the whole law firm support and success space, everyone in it and around it. I think that it's a phenomenal community, just like the community of law firm owners that I continue to work with and serve and participate in is a phenomenal community. We're business owners out there looking to make the world better, creating jobs, creating opportunity and shining a positive spotlight out into the world, out into our own communities, and trying to just collectively make the world maybe a little bit better because we're involved in it, to leave that little dent in the world. All right, I'm not going to get too hokey inspirational here. We'll move on and I will see you all.
Speaker 1:I just recorded a brand new collection of upcoming episodes. They're awesome, so excited for you to hear them. But yeah, I will. Oh, one last thing Drop that five star review. Okay, I really would appreciate it. Those do go a long, long way.
Speaker 1:It seems like we're towing the line on getting a few, but if you want to press, or if you would press, that five star review button now below, that would make a huge, huge impact. I want to get to 50 reviews. I'm going to get to 50 reviews before the end of April, so that gives me two months to get to 50 reviews. I think we're at 31 right now on Apple Podcasts. I want to get to 50 reviews on Apple Podcasts. I've seen a lot climbing on Spotify. Thank you all, by the way, for those awesome reviews. We're making a donation shortly to St Jude Children's Hospital on behalf of everyone who has left a review in that space. We're just collecting some last ones to add towards the tally and then we'll make that announcement. So thank you all, and I will see you in the next episode of they Don't Teach this in Law School.