Join me on The Renegade Lawyers Podcast as I sit down with business law expert Matt Davis. We dive into his journey of scaling a law firm to eight offices, the importance of systems, and how to build a team that's eager to learn and grow. Matt shares his personal story of resilience after a sudden loss, and provides insights into his books "The Art of Preventing Stupid" and "The Strong Protected Business". Tune in to discover how to strengthen your practice and prepare for the unexpected.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Join me on The Renegade Lawyers Podcast as I sit down with business law expert Matt Davis. We dive into his journey of scaling a law firm to eight offices, the importance of systems, and how to build a team that's eager to learn and grow. Matt shares his personal story of resilience after a sudden loss, and provides insights into his books "The Art of Preventing Stupid" and "The Strong Protected Business". Tune in to discover how to strengthen your practice and prepare for the unexpected.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
where a lot of lawyers are fearful of adding lawyers. But let's talk about what you do for your team, what you have your team do to continue this journey of learning.
Speaker 3:They just kind of get after it.
Speaker 3:You know, jamie's our firm administrator. When I was telling her and leaving it, she's the smartest person in the law firm and you know, gosh, I was just in New York for a week and she ginned out so many projects I was like, wow, so she's great. You know Trisha's our CFO and she figured out how to dial in. We're an hourly bill firm, right. So you know, she got under the hood, figured out how to dial in our collections right when she runs about 98%. And you know, go find that anywhere else in the law business. You know it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation. Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass. This is the Renegade Lawyer podcast.
Speaker 2:Through each episode I get to interview interesting people inside and outside of legal. Today I've got a great guest, matt Davis. Matt is a part. I've met Matt because he's a part of our highest end lawyer mastermind group. Matt is a business lawyer running Davis business law out in Oklahoma and other states. He actually has eight offices all together. He's a lawyer, he's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's an entrepreneur, but he's helping entrepreneurs because this entire business is helping businesses get their stuff straight and organized and he's really got a great model for adding lawyers and expanding his geographic reach. This is gonna be a fun interview.
Speaker 2:Matt has been a guest on a lot of podcasts. He's got over 25 years experience. Ink Magazine published his first book and he's been a great guest for a long time. He's been a great guest for a long time and we're gonna be talking about that because we have a great experience. Ink Magazine publishes first book, the Art of Preventing Stupid, and Matt is famous in our group for coming up with little one liners describing all different variations of stupid and we laugh. And then they publish the Strong Protected Business and he's got his own podcast the Strong, protected Business and the Art of Preventing Stupid of course. Five kids, two adopted. I wanna talk about that because we have something in common there.
Speaker 3:I'm thrilled to be here. I look blue today, I realize so. But yeah, and I've got to get. Actually, I gotta get around to publishing those the next book and doing the next podcast, but I've had a couple things going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you wanna talk about that? Because I think before we went live, you mentioned something that's pretty significant and I think that every lawyer would be interested if you wanna talk about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've been growing, we've been scaling the firm. But we had a great COO who I always was tickled. He was the number 10 JAG officer in the Air Force, so he used to answer to a four star general. And then he started answering to me, which people would say, oh yeah, Matt Sterak's boss unlikely, I'm not sure I'm really his boss and he, rather inconsiderately, as I was joshing with his wife yesterday, died last month and just I can't remember I think it was January 29th, maybe it was February 1st. Right in there he just died heart attack out of the blue, 57 years old and healthy and horrible deal, but it, yeah, threw a few things on my plate this month.
Speaker 2:I'll bet you, systemically and programmatically, how prepared was the firm for this. It's an awful event. You have eight offices. You are known for your business structures and then helping other businesses actually get their structures in shape. This still has to be a big blow, personally and to the business.
Speaker 3:In a weird way it's more of a personal blow because man, he was one of my best friends. This is gonna sound counterintuitive, but it's really a compliment in the sense that we're very systematic in how we build our systems and we're gonna grow and we will miss him, but our systems were built so solidly and that when I came in then the Monday after he passed on, all of the reports were on my desk by Monday afternoon. So that's really a credit to him, because when we do systems, when we do a report or a system, we will document it very assiduously, very detailed, and then hand it to somebody else and say, okay, can you replicate this? So that's a real testament to him.
Speaker 3:And part of that is one thing we're good at is the art of preventing stupid, which is the first book, and the second book which I again have to get published but I've got a few things going on addresses the idea of how do you identify what the real threats to your business are. Let's look and go dig into your vulnerabilities, because if you will deal with those up front, those are the businesses that can capitalize on opportunities. And we run the Business Immune System Report, which is from that first book every quarter when we do our strategic planning, and this was something we'd considered it's a remote possibility, but yeah, this stuff happens. It's the circle of life, simba, all right.
Speaker 2:Let's back up a little bit because I'm curious now as your journey through the profession when you started your own practice, were you good at systems? Did you? Is what you have built today, what the vision was when you started, or did you grow into this Sort of your own knowledge wise like getting better and seeking out more and more business education yourself?
Speaker 3:Yeah, A lot of my buddies were popping off about the word auto-didact the other day and I'm a self-motivated learner and you've heard me pop off about this book. That book I'm constantly reading but I'm pretty selective anymore about what I read. Now I was 45 years old. I had a very sophisticated marketing strategy in that I was not in the phone book and I didn't have a website. I had nothing. But I was busy all the time because I had just repeat referral business.
Speaker 3:And then I had a midlife crisis and said, hey, let's go start a law firm and I had a lot of depth of knowledge of business law. But as far as scaling and growing a business I didn't know come here from sick, I'm about it. So I went out and I just decided to go learn, and that's something I'm pretty comfortable with and something we really encourage our team to do, in the sense that building a business, getting successful at it, is a series of identifying the skill sets you need to learn and going and doing it, and we have a phrase called 800 in that. That goes back to when I wanted to go to a good graduate school and I was horrible at English, probably still am, but I decided I was going to ace the GRE. I perfect scored the English section of the GRE. I made it 800. That got me in. You know that, and some other good scores got me into a good graduate school.
Speaker 3:And all that was is let's learn how to match, let's how to take this test, let's learn how to do this, and we're good at that.
Speaker 2:You're good at it. We always that way, Do you think like you could? Hey, we're going to do high school science and I'm going to be a master of biology because it's all there in the textbook and I'm going to go to study it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I never liked school, because I hate sitting there listening to somebody tell me what to do.
Speaker 2:I'm just doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3:No, and yeah, I just I go learn how to do it and that's the deal. So yeah, I'm looking at one of my guitars right here. That's mainly what I did in high school. So there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the heavy metal band Geriatric Steel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's, we're working on that. Right now We've got to find a new bass player, but yeah, we were working on some new songs.
Speaker 2:That's one of the things you mentioned a minute ago is that you encourage your team as well to go out into, be learners and to learn how to learn. Talk to us a little bit about that, because I want to get to where we talk about how you scale out to eight different offices and organizing crazy and I remember from prior conversations is like every lawyer you add, you can calculate exactly how much extra money is going to come down to your pocket, where a lot of lawyers are fearful of adding lawyers. But let's talk about what you do for your team, what you have your team do to continue this journey of learning.
Speaker 3:They should get after it. Jamie is our firm administrator. Well, I was tell her and we mean that she's the smartest person in the law firm. And you know, gosh, I was just in New York for a week and she ginned out so many projects I was like, wow, so she's great. Trisha is our CFO and she figured out how to dial in we're an hourly bill firm. Right, she got under the hood, figured out how to dial in our collections when she runs about 98% and go find that anywhere else in the law. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3:And, of course, derek was just a master. He was a genius in his own right. But I guess the point is it doesn't take a real genius to learn things. You just have to respect the curve. But you can't let it intimidate you by the curve and the learning curve. You have to go. Hey, I know I need to know this, I know I need to get better at this scale and just have the internal confidence to go. Okay, we can figure this out. And then guess what? Once you learn and once your team learns to go figure things out, they'll go do it. And it's fun. Now, you sometimes get people on your team that won't go do that and I get them off my team real quick. I'm pretty intolerant of people that won't learn stuff. I'll just ask them to leave. It's time for you to go. You're not going any further with us.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that for a minute, because you just packed a lot of things there, including we're going to come back to the 98% working rate, which would stun many lawyers who are listening to this who do hourly billing and flat fee billing. But so many law firms fail or they struggle and they don't ever get out of their own way. And so how are you all screening for? And you might be good, you might not be good at it, but how are you trying to screen for the personality that is going to continue learning? You won't have to have the discussion, hey, I just need you to leave because you're not trying to go learn, because I think this is.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting phenomena that for owners like we need folks who will come and grind and do the work. Owners are often hesitant to weirdly hesitant to let the lawyers grow and unleash themselves, and yet you're building something with that personality type. So you're screening for it. You're getting rid of it when you're wrong on the screen. What are you all doing? Or is it all just? Don't tell me it's all just locked in. You let them in and then you kick them out.
Speaker 3:No, it's intentionality, with a lot of mistakes. How about that? Sure, yeah, let's separate staff from attorneys, because I have a whole different thought process about hiring attorneys and I've got some. I had some bad hires last year and I've I learned a lot from that. But the thing so I've got right here Jeff Smart's who, which is the best hiring book coupled with hiring for attitude. It's a pretty simple principle that underlies that book, which is the leopard, doesn't change its spots. It's that simple. The people that go learn, that create solutions, that want to go create solutions, that's what they do. They want to sit on their duffs. That's what they do.
Speaker 3:And I've made some mistakes hiring some people that I thought were creative and ambitious and wanted to help us build something, and all they really wanted was a paycheck and to sit around and waste my time. And I'll give you a couple of projects and you fail at them, you're gone. And remember I had a reception years ago and she's really brilliant woman and she said to me years later said you just start throwing stuff at me and said, here, figure this out, don't be a chicken SHIT. And you know. So we really look. I make mistakes with that, but my best answer In the attorney space.
Speaker 2:how are you finding the hiring market? A lot of what we hear is that it's challenging to bring up. You have a unique environment and a unique, I think, law firm philosophy, so I know that from your participation with our groups. But let's talk about that for a moment. How are you finding the market? How are you getting these lawyers?
Speaker 3:Okay, let me back up with this. We're an hourly bill firm and we are billing quota for our attorneys is six hours a day and we very much sell quality of life to our attorneys. Because those are our internal customers. Our first core value is believe and protect their dreams. That really means the staff and the attorneys, before it means the clients. Of course, it means the clients too. But like Richard Branson said, you take care of your team, they'll take care of your customers.
Speaker 3:Preach your brother Matt, and our billing quota. I might have said this is six hours a day and I could do it a different way. You've heard of other law firms that just pay people on collections. My attitude about that is I'm not taking care of you if I let you do that, and it really doesn't help our culture, because if you want to have a productive legal career, you need to be billing six hours a day. From our perspective, that's going to you're going to end your legal career with a good 401k, you're going to have to make good money and so on. So that's the structure and I'm really passionate and really determined about that.
Speaker 3:Now for sourcing of attorneys. We use hiring for attitude for our ad, which people think is insane. It has cracks in there. Look, we don't hire any e-horses and most law firm ads would you like to work for a prestigious law firm and be a douchebag to humanity? And they're just so predictable. So we really set ourselves up as a distinction or as a different place, and we are. And so we'll use LinkedIn quite a lot.
Speaker 3:I've got two campaigns running right now on LinkedIn and then we'll use some recruiters here and there. I'm pretty selective about where I'll use recruiters because they're expensive. But if it's a particular market, say a new market we're going into, I am willing to use recruiters because I need somebody with a higher level of confidence, somebody who I would call a first chair attorney. In a smaller market or in a market where we're more established, I'm pretty comfortable using LinkedIn because I've got it's like in our bigger markets I've already got three or four first chair attorneys and so we can basically have an associate. I can find those. I just got a really good lead on one that we're probably going to interview up in Kansas. It cost me $250 on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:And yeah. So basically what you're saying, we're using creative marketing to attract people by really running ads or getting the message out that this would be a great place for you if this ABC and this is not going to be a really great place for you and you won't last very long if you are CDEF and those ads attract and they tend to attract the right people. They tend to attract a smaller pool, probably and people that tell you you're crazy, you're never going to find lawyers with these kind of stupid ads, which we also have used for years and years. So talk to us a little bit about the firm. Now it's Davis Business Law.
Speaker 2:I described it as helping entrepreneurs, businesses and business owners to get their stuff. You are in eight different offices now. So let's start about the scope of services that you provide. And then I do want to get into this 98% collection rate. And then also I want to talk about because I know how you bring on lawyers who are new to your firm and get them acclimated. So that's a big. I always ask three part objectionable questions. Talk to us about the scope of services that you all are providing and across, I think, three states. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're probably four if you count Missouri, because Kansas City is on the border and it's real simple. We are the family doctor of business law. There it is. That's it in a nutshell, and we'll get into some big deals from time to time. We did about $180 million deal last year and we had Vincent and Alkins do all the heavy lifting paperwork and we just redlined and worked on that. They were the heart surgeons and that's a really good place for us to be.
Speaker 3:We take great care of entrepreneurs, mom and pops, and we've got some bigger businesses. We've got businesses that run $30 or $40 or $50 million a year, but we love helping the small people out too, and there's tons of them. There's tons of them and nobody markets to them and we're good marketers and I'm violent for lack of a better word or very dedicated or very, as Seth Godin says, marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department and my role. Clarity for the firm. Everybody has a role. Clarity that just boils down. This is actually from scaling up. It's your function. Accountability chart. My function in the firm is growth and I'm responsible for growth, which means recruiting and marketing, meaning getting the attorneys and getting them to work. That's my job.
Speaker 2:And there's nobody else who's going to be as interested in those two functions as you are, especially when the seat used to be 100% owner of the firm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we.
Speaker 2:We're good.
Speaker 3:No, you go ahead.
Speaker 2:How do you let's talk about, because I think a lot of people are interested in this 98% collection rate?
Speaker 3:That now is really a result of solving and, by the way, when you go into business, figure out what everybody else is doing wrong and then fix it. It's a lot of businesses that simple. So here's two things people hate about hourly bill farms. Number one they hate the mushroom treatment which is getting fed BS and kept in the dark, especially about their money. Which ties to number two, which is the blank check syndrome. Right, yes, so this takes some discipline, but it is worth it for everybody, including for our net promoter scores.
Speaker 3:Every week our attorneys will send in their case review and it says look, this is probably the work I have come in on the pipeline, let's get a retainer request out with an explanation. So then case finance sends out a retainer request and what that does is it tells the client obviously we need more money, but it gives them the opportunity to go OK, great, let's charge ahead. I understand. Or B, hey, let's hit break, d breaks, let me talk to my attorney, figure this out. Or no, I don't have the money, or no, I don't want to do it, because we understand that we can become a problem.
Speaker 3:The cost of a case can become a problem in what the client is trying to achieve and we bill on a two-week cycle. 50% of our clients get a bill one week, 50% the next. So we bill quick so that clients aren't getting a bill. You hear these horror stories of getting a bill six months after the fact, and for us you're not only getting a bill every week, every other week, but you're also getting advice. Hey, this is what's coming down the pipeline and yeah, it requires discipline up front, but it just kills the pain on the back end. Our collections problems are Trish is freaking out about a $5,000 one that somehow snuck through and I'm like shh scheme of what we do, not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2:It strikes me that the other thing that the client is getting is they know, hey, matt Davis Law Firm is thinking about my case proactively. As you say, matt, they're getting a plan and they can choose to opt out or up for a partial plan. They can make decisions in advance and they're seeing this every two weeks. So that's I have to imagine in most law or the stories, the horror stories I hear from the billable hour law firms is oh my gosh. Next thing I know the client noticed $25,000 because the case got messy and the client's upset and they can't pay us and there's more messiness coming down the road that now we can't extract ourselves from because of our ethical obligations and that is a horror story. So that is a great discipline. When lawyers come new to the firm, how do you onboard them to this culture and this discipline?
Speaker 3:Okay. So when we bring on a new attorney, the COO, traditionally Derek has spent three or four days with them in whichever market. We're working on that, we're moving some people around within the firm, so that's an interesting deal. But the other issue is productivity is critical. If our guys aren't billing, then we may as well just go home and play baseball.
Speaker 3:The way we ramp up productivity, you can't just throw somebody in and expect them to be full tilt. So we have a three plus three plan. So actually it's more like three than six plus three. Add three hours a week to your productivity. First week bill six or three. Second week bill six. Third week, nine. When you're doing 30 billable hours a week, that gets you pretty well ramped up up in about three months, two and a half three months. It helps them have that little baby step of going okay, I can do this. Now we have learned too that we have to very carefully this is from Mike McKaylowitz is fix this next, which, by the way, is fantastic, and this is part of something I'm fixing next, because we've had some issues with this lately. He calls it own and I call it amen, which is aim, measure, evaluate, nurture, and you just have to watch that like a hawk, because if your productivity slips, just like if your collections rate slip, you're just doing this for jollies.
Speaker 4:Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at greatlivermarketingcom.
Speaker 2:How do you, when you have lawyers that are new to the firm, how do you manage quality control? And then let me just I'll stop with that question how are you, how do you make guys and gals you got in there in a city, maybe far away, or actually know what they're doing and are executing it correctly?
Speaker 3:We're pretty self-aware that we're really bad at training young lawyers. We're just like, look, we're bad at it and every now and again we have somebody screw up. We got our first insurance claim last year and they got 15 lawyers Since I told one of my clients, once you have 50 crocks out on the road, something's gonna happen, and so we hire good lawyers. We don't go around hiring dummies and somebody made a mistake and there you go.
Speaker 2:That's not what yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it happens, so you can't freak out about it.
Speaker 2:On the other end of the spectrum. How do you or do you work to make sure that, if the lawyer leaves, the client is attached to David's business law as a brand?
Speaker 3:We will about once a year we'll have a, what I call a. We'll have a separation of that. Okay, I've got one going on right now and it's obviously the client's discretion, but most of them we usually keep 70% of them because they're attached to the firm and these are even with really good lawyers. They're used to our systems, they know we're taking good care of them. Yeah, they like their lawyer, but they tend to stay with us. And there are some clients that we're saying, oh fine, go ahead and go, but that's invariably gonna happen. But, by the way, we're pretty good at getting rid of trouble making clients really quickly. I've got a little chart that maps them out my 3D chart.
Speaker 2:What's your threshold?
Speaker 3:I talk about all of our clients come in as one of four Ds, and the fourth one are the ones that we want Okay, if you can get past the first three, and that's number one or deceivers. Okay, there's a lot of people that need legal help because they're liars and they've gotten into problems because of that, and we really work to get them out, because the thing that's really fulfilling about what we do is when we're working with really good people and helping them build their dreams. Okay. So we don't really want to work with liars. Sometimes they'll get in our ecosystem. We work at getting them out.
Speaker 3:The second D are what we call dramatics, and that's from the drama triangle, which is a psychological construct and, by the way, we look at this like a Venn diagram. That's a great construct to understand, because those people, they want us to be their rescuers and what they'll do is they'll turn on you if you can't just perform to their exact specs and they won't take responsibility for what the situation is. And then the third one are debtors. These are just people that don't pay their bills, and we're very aware that these people get into legal problems and or just create them, and we don't like to work with them and we work on getting them out of our system. Now let's get rid of those.
Speaker 3:Everybody that comes in is a doubter. They're a doubter and our job and we recognize it and accept it and acknowledge it is to turn them into a believer that we are a long-term partner and a helper for them that is going to help them achieve what they want to in life, because our job as an attorney and a counselor is to take somebody from a point they don't want to be to a better place. And, by the way, when we can do that on an ongoing basis, it's really gratifying to our attorneys.
Speaker 2:It's do you then still the way you just described doubters and what your job really is fabulous. That is not a lawyer typical skill set. So do you train specifically For here? When we have folks come to work for us, we have the Ben Glass Law culture and we train on the culture and the big picture of what we're trying to do here create a place where people will thrive. How do you do that? Because you're hiring great lawyers who may not ever have been in an environment or a firm with this type of philosophy.
Speaker 3:Almost always, almost always. A lot of them will get a biosmosis and we do morning huddles which are just 10 minutes tops, and this would be how they pick up. Look, everybody here is collaborative. We are non-competitive internally. New lawyer with us in Dallas was looking for a particular form and I just rounded up via email for the old hands and I'm like guys figure out how to help Charlie out, and they dog piled on him and he's oh wow, how did that? I wasn't expecting that. And then one of the ladies just gave him exactly what he needed. I said yeah, I told you she's smart. And now here's something we do that is legendary within the firm. We do retreats every six months and that's from the 22-year-old receptionist all the way to our 60-year-old gray-haired wise lawyers. And we also take spouses, because I don't want a spouse sitting at home grumbling about how I'm sitting here watching these bratty kids while I'm going.
Speaker 2:Every six months yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it doesn't cost me anything to have a happy. It cost me a couple hundred bucks extra to have a happy spouse. That's hey. Dbl Davis Business all just took me on a little vacation and those are great for everybody. Trish is up in. We're going to Fabulous Wichita next time. I'm curious about what the retreats involve.
Speaker 3:OK so yeah, this one. We're staying at the Swanky Hotel up there a great hotel, really nice, high-end Marriott and a lot like a Kimpton used to be, and then we're having a party in the speakeasy on I guess it'd be Thursday night. We have a learning day and we'll do some silly stuff, but we teach story brand at that and we usually teach it through a crazy story and then we're having an iron chef that night with Wichita State We'll have a cooking competition. It's just really important to get everybody together and just reinforce the culture, reinforce the Gallitarian culture and a culture. This is how we treat each other and this is my people very much, have a lot of love for each other, and it's super important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in so many firms, if they've done anything on culture, they put up a poster or something. Most firms haven't done anything on it for real actually, and so I've been working there retreats for a couple of years now. I have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, culture is about how you treat each other, and it's about what you tolerate within your company.
Speaker 2:So I want to do two more topics. I think one is this geographic expansion. So again, a lot of lawyers in the space talk about geographic expansion. It's sometimes challenging. Sometimes they want to do it. It's an SEO play. You have obviously done it a number of times. Is there a formula in terms of choosing and then ramping up another location office?
Speaker 3:First thing, we like to hit base hits so we don't go swinging for the fence. We started I live in Enid, which is a small market, very small market, and I like I hate lines, so I like to live in my hometown. So we started in Oklahoma City, which is an hour and a half away, and then we just decided, ok, let's figure out what it takes to do this and let's become a multi-state, multi-office offer. So we went to Tulsa and Wichita and started growing from there. Yeah, seo or SEM is important, figuring out what marketing strategies work for you. We are very digital, which we think is a great strategy. And, by the way, it's a great strategy because I tell all my attorneys you are not joining any chamber of commerce because that's a waste of time. That's like the antiquated marketing strategy. Yeah, it works to an extent, but we're not and, by the way, we're not going to compete with people in there, we're going to compete in our space and so that's.
Speaker 3:And then we've learned you have to hire. When you're starting a new market for us, we have to hire somebody who has a higher degree of confidence. For instance, marsh, who started Kansas City with us. He's a 20-year legal veteran and just fantastic lawyer and kind of a big kid at heart. He's really funny. And after that we can hire some younger lawyers who we can dovetail in. But we do make a distinction between, as we're growing, between, in a new market, having a first chair versus a second chair, and sometimes we get a one and a half chair. So beyond that it's simple We'll use Regis when we start in a new market and then, once we settle in, we'll just start growing Our bigger markets. Right now we're just hiring a lawyer a year. Pretty much every summer we go hire a new lawyer and just add them. How many lawyers under roof? 14?
Speaker 2:right now. Let's talk for a moment as we close out. You have, you and your wife Allison have five children To our adoptive. So you and I have something in common. I'm always curious about others journey. Where did the interest come from all the time? How the kid is doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had three, as you put the math together there, and we just wanted to prove we were crazy. So we adopted some kids and I'm joking. But we wanted some more kids and Allison had aged out she's seven years older than me. Nobody believes that when I tell them that. And I married her because I wanted a dead even chance To get some life insurance and because women die seven years.
Speaker 2:With Matt go by the way, in our mastermind group. You just never know what it's actually going to come out of his mouth to make us laugh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and our neighbors are some of the net people in the neighborhood. They'd adopted from Russia and we used the same agency to do that. It was wild, it was just like the Wild West. Matt, you got the five bottles of single malt scotch and the five bottles of Chanel. You got, okay, let's go to the courthouse. You know, yeah, russia was just crazy. And then that's Luke and Sally's Ethiopian and Ethiopian was so civilized and so nice and they're just. They're just like the nicest people in the world. And, by the way, when I'm out in your town In DC, there's a lot of Ethiopians there because there's a direct flight from Addis to DC. As a matter of fact, we brought Sally in through DC and I see those Ethiopians and I saw you were at the table. I started dropping Amaric words and he's just like how does his white boy know?
Speaker 2:my language.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, yeah, that's. It's a huge blessing to us. And they're, yeah, although I'm about to kill them for messing up the kitchen all the time.
Speaker 2:So this is probably another phrase to use about to kill them. All right, so you, as we're all we entrepreneurs who are owners of firms are always working either on opportunities or Solving issues. Obviously of a big issue With the passing of Derek, because he was a very significant part of it, it sounds like you are working their way through that. I think you mentioned earlier you're going through some sort of a separation with at least one of your lawyers now, but we're still in the first quarter of 2024. We're recording this. What's on the plate, do you think for 2024, for Davis business law?
Speaker 3:We're regrouping right now, of course, from Derek and we've got a meeting two days from now with the attorney that's Looking into pretty much cinched up. We just want to firm that up. He's coming over from Tulsa and Right now we again I've been reading McKayla, which is fixed this next and we're working on a couple productivity issues and just refining that, because you know you can collect all you want, but if you don't have anything to bill, that's pretty painful and one reason that's off the track a little bit Is because Derek's our COO's role clarity they are responsible for productivity and when he up and dies on us, that naturally goes off the tracks. So I am just assiduously dialing that in right now. We've been redoing reports and Then we're going to go grow.
Speaker 3:We we keep a lot of money in the bank. We run very conservatively and which opens up opportunities to you, and we were talking about that at GLM. I was talking with one of the other owners and we were talking with one of the younger guys going. It's just a spiritual thing when you've got money in the bank you can just make better decisions because you're not freaking out all the time. So we're, we've got cash in the bank, we can go grow whenever we want. Right now we're going to stabilize some stuff, we're going to get the new team together and then we'll probably go pop Springfield, missouri Just about a half million per half million Person market will go pop probably maybe Northwest Arkansas that's another half million. San Antonio, houston, those sorts of places. So we did our strategic planning Three days before Derek died, so it all went out the window.
Speaker 2:My lord prior to Derek's passing, how much time were you spending on legal versus Key for all which is?
Speaker 3:last year I spent way too much time and I really realized that what was happening is, if we had an attorney separate, I would end up with some of their cases. I Clearly divorced myself from that and we had a few big accounts that just kept roping me in and I just finally told him look, I'm not touching your account, I can't. I've got great attorneys and I'm just I'm out, I'm done. So I have three clients, maybe five. I've got a couple smaller clients that I still like to work for, but I have Three main clients that I work for and that depends on any given week. I went to Austin and tried to case a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, and I think that's important little three different law firm owners conferences, yours and EO I guess just two, and then another EO thing and in professional services I talked to several owners, my peers, whose businesses are really struggling because they are not, you know, involved in. I'm tossing this idea around. Cunningham talks about the difference between an operator and an owner and I think, until you really have to have somebody really passionate as the alpha wolf in your organization and right now, who's leading the attorney team, right now I'm still doing that. It's maybe too much. A few more attorneys. I'm gonna really need to move to the owner and find more of a team leader for the attorney.
Speaker 2:What are the groups? Are you currently?
Speaker 3:I mean EO lawyers is the main one and that's entrepreneurs organization. There's a lawyers group and and and then just EO forum in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2:You're a busy guy, so the website is Davis business law dot com, right? Anything else people should go and look at you, say You're pretty significant on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:We use it a lot. I don't post much. I get annoyed with LinkedIn. We were. I was just in New York with my buddy from London. We were joshing about it.
Speaker 4:What drives me?
Speaker 3:nuts is everybody. I'm so honored to have achieved the dog catcher of the year award and I'm like, okay, great, whatever, nobody cares.
Speaker 2:You're using it to fish for the next next group of lawyers for the firm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for it's we've been pretty successful with it. There's exceptions to it and but yeah, I just popped an ad up for Tulsa yesterday and got a really good new prospect.
Speaker 2:Best advice, as we end here, for young lawyers who are thinking about starting their own firm.
Speaker 3:Oh, Wow, you got to work, you got a bill and a lot of, a lot of these young lawyers. We get really disgusted with them and we screen this out. We have, you know, a psychographic of. We call them Carrie Bradshaw's and I think the law business is about champagne brunches and we also to not be sexist. We also have Chris Bradshaw who carries twin sister they didn't do a show about her from sex in the city and man, it's about helping people.
Speaker 3:You got to get your hands dirty and you got to put your heart into it. And if you're just going to be a slacker, go work for a company. And if you're going to go grow and build a firm, figure out how to help other attorneys have a great place to work. That's the deal. That is I. You've heard me say this. People ask me what business I'm in. I say I'm in the attorney lifestyle business. I'm going to give attorneys a great place to work. I'm going to support them, I'm going to take care of a lot of the problems of practicing law for them and I do that.
Speaker 2:My my boat rises and they come in, they build their six hours a day and, like you say, over time they build that great savings and that retirement plan and all of that. And you've really Created a place where, if they want to work, they can work and they don't have to do much else. You're going to go out and help them, get the cases and work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and as they grow, our attorneys will get in and they'll build a book of business within the firm and we give them a cut of that. Marsh just picked up a new case that's a repeat case. He's going to make a nice cut off of that too. So there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we take good care of our peeps you do. Thanks so much, matt, for carving out the time.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I had no idea that it was such a tumultuous Couple of months here for you, so wish you continued luck as you move forward there. Of course, we'll see you, hopefully in April at our ex quarterly meeting. Yes, sir, we'll be there, okay, thank you. Thank you, man, bye, bye now.
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