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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Ep. 183 – Designing the Business (and Life) You Actually Want: Part 1 of 4
In this special 4-part series, Ben Glass takes you behind the curtain of how Great Legal Marketing really began—and how designing a life you love should always come before building the business.
This first episode, recorded live at a Great Legal Marketing event, covers:
- Ben’s origin story: the Hilton Garden Inn room where it all began
- Why he stopped being the "tactics guy"—and what happened next
- How he built a team that gave him real equity in the firm and freedom in his life
- The power of telling your 100-word personal story (with an exercise you can do today)
- Why being interesting beats spending the most on ads
If you're tired of playing by someone else's rules and want to design a business that actually supports your life, this series is for you.
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.
Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work and still make it home for dinner. Each week, ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the status quo Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's Ben and welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Today we're kicking off a four-part series from a talk I gave a while back about designing a business and a life that you actually want. In this first episode you'll hear my origin story, the tiny Hilton Garden Inn room where great legal marketing really began, and how those early days shaped everything we do now. I'll share why I stopped being the tactics guy and how building a great team created real equity in the firm and freedom in my life. So I want you to listen for three big ideas you can use. Number one how to craft your 100-word personal story so clients remember you for more than oh, he's a good lawyer. Number two, why being interesting and memorable beats spending the most on ads. We prove this every single day at Ben Glass Law, where we are spending almost nothing on paid advertising. Number three, what it means to design your life first and let the business support it Family, fitness, faith, community and all connected. You'll also hear why confidence is a value at our firm and how that shows up in a way that we talk to clients and lead our teams. So grab a notebook. By the end you'll have a prompt to write your own 100-word story and a clearer picture of the firm you're actually building. All right, now let's dive in. Wow, good morning everyone so well welcome. Thank you for being here. We're so honored that you're here and I promise to you is that we'll honor your commitment that you've made to us of your time and your money. Your families are at home, many of them, and so we appreciate that.
Speaker 2:As I was preparing the talk and what we were going to do here this weekend, I said to Colin. I said I know we have videos someplace right, and I was amazed even myself at how consistent our message has been. That video. What you wouldn't know is that video is from an event at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fairfax and I believe that was our first GLM event. We had done a little bit of stuff pre-GLM Tom Foster, rem Jackson and I and so you wouldn't see us today, and that was a small room. Today our office overlooks that Hilton Garden Inn. That's pretty cool and inside our office, our training space. Those of you, many of you, have been there that's about as big as that room was when we started.
Speaker 2:Another thing you probably, if you've been around a long time, you would know that back then, and certainly up until the last couple of years, I did a lot of the heavy load of teaching the act of marketing. This is how you do a book. This is how you design a website Not create it like Tom does, but like what the elements are. This is how you do a newsletter. I don't have to do that anymore and I'm so happy about that. Because what was it, charlie, you said nine years ago? This guy, this young guy from college, walks into my office who I identified as smart, as having the right spirit. He'll tell you if you ask him. The interview ended with here's a stack of books, go read them and let me know what you think. And today, charlie, he's the marketing guy.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you want to know the nuts and bolts about how to assemble the marketing stuff and the actual messages, you talk to Charlie If you want to know. I'm so blessed Tiffany Swidensky and I don't know if Tiffany is in the room or not because I can't see and it's really hot up here but Tiffany is our internet. I call her our internet guru-ess, if that's actually a word. Every time I hear Tiffany speak, whether it's in my leadership meeting that we have every week, we'll talk a little bit about that. At one of the events we have in-house at the training center or something like this, I say, oh my God, I am so happy that you are on my team. Right, you want to know about.
Speaker 2:You know, I used to teach this is how you do follow-up sequences, this is how you run Infusionsoft. I've not been under the hood of Infusionsoft in at least eight years, I think. Right? So you want to know about the mechanics of Infusionsoft and building sequences and stuff. You got to talk to Colin and be in Colin's room when he speaks. So there's a, there's a message there and I'm going to talk about here a little bit, which is, you know, building equity in your firm. This is how you, this is how you end up dealing with.
Speaker 2:Okay, the problem we have a lot of folks have is, like, too many cases Like, how do you, how do you manage the rocket ship or the roller coaster, right? So I'm I'm blessed, I'm blessed with a, with a really great team, and I would add to my team Sammy. Sammy is here, sammy Chong, he's here, sammy is, and many of you know Sammy's been so instrumental in. Sammy doesn't know shit about marketing. I mean, he really doesn't right. But that's, I mean, that's okay.
Speaker 2:The whole point of this conference is that so much of what we do is changing what goes on inside here. And you know, one day we'll sell the recordings of those weekly calls you and I have for like a million dollars. People say, oh, really messed up. We both are right, but it's just absolutely crazy. So we went and looked back at that video. I'm like I guess I was pretty smart back then, 14, 15 years ago, because I was saying exactly the same thing. And so, whether you're here for the first time or whether you're one of the really many familiar faces I now see there's going to be something for you this weekend. Sometimes it is that one big idea. Frankly, if you're here for the first time, your head's probably going to explode because there is absolutely so much to do. So let's begin. And I'm at that. My eyes are at that weird stage where I've got a little monitor here and sometimes I can see the print and others I can't.
Speaker 2:But this is a real email. I've hidden the name, I've changed the name, but a real email I got about three weeks ago from someone who just discovered us. I'm a lawyer in Texas. I've been getting your emails. I plucked it out of the spam folder and I started to read it and I'm going to listen. He says after 21 years of practice, I have a book of 25 clients in three months starting from scratch. You can probably read this. I returned he's somewhere in Texas after a nasty divorce. In Houston I got arrested for DUI in my driveway. Five million people here, so he's paying attention.
Speaker 2:But he asked a question that a lot of people over the years have asked me, which is if you're so good at marketing, why are you doing this? Which is, if you're so good at marketing, why are you doing this right? Why aren't you just running a law firm and making lots of money and practicing law all the time and doing everything that you teach here? And it's a fair question. Another question I sometimes get is if you search the lawyer, mentor, lawyer, coach, lawyer, marketing space, there's a handful of us out there. So someone will email me and go how do you compare to name a guru? I don't know. I don't go to their stuff, I don't read their stuff. I don't know. I just know what I know.
Speaker 2:So I I wrote back to David and this took me about 90 seconds to compose. Uh, cause he had asked you know how come you're not running a medium-sized law firm with 500 clients? All right, I'll answer your question. I don't know what you mean by medium, but I've got 16 people under roof and I pick the life I want to lead and I do stuff that's interesting to me first in bold. So I'm blending the firm nine kids, four adopted from China, crossfit, high-level soccer, refereeing, speaking from the stage, what I'm doing here now, what I like to do a lot helping with the marketing for my church, both locally and regionally. Writing books, serving on the board that does good work in China, uganda, india and Cambodia. And mentoring other small biz owners. And I'm happily married since 1981 to my best friend and we're really good at this.
Speaker 2:So let me dissect that for just a moment. That's less than 100 words. That's my story, my unique story, in a nutshell, and so let me ask you this first Do you have that for yourself? Have you thought about what your unique story? Because it is, of all of your marketing assets, and we'll talk about why here in just a few moments. Having a story good, if it's true, and this is all true. Having a story that's interesting, memorable. People like to talk about it right.
Speaker 2:Is far more important in my view for those of us in the solo and small firm market, because most of us are not spending the most in our market on TV and radio and wasn't it cool in the video we had the yellow pages right? Remember those days? It's far more important than all that and I'll tell you that many of my clients, if you met them and asked them who's Ben Glass and what does he do, they could pretty much give you some version of this about me which tells you that there is a relationship that I have with my list, my herd, my tribe, my clients, my prospects. That's special. That goes far beyond. He's a good lawyer, because anybody can say that, and many of you are, hopefully most of you, hopefully everybody here is a good lawyer, right?
Speaker 2:And so just for a moment, think about what that is. Do you have that? And I would encourage you, as Charlie said, pen and paper and, by the way, he didn't mention but these green sticky things on your tables. There's a couple of. Maybe I could tell you about that later. We have green sticky things to write down questions and ideas and we have whiteboards. I won't tell you how much the hotel charges for the whiteboards. Ah, we have our no excuses action card as you get ideas, and we'll talk about committing to yourself to make behavioral changes. So make sure these get around to the tables.
Speaker 2:But start to think about what is your bulleted list of what your story is? And the mindset block that many lawyers will have is I don't want my personal stuff to get out, I don't want it to be all about me. Okay, but now you're making a decision to be in that big, big, big pool of commoditized. I'm a domestic relations lawyer, I'm a criminal defense lawyer, I'm a personal injury lawyer. So before you leave here, I want you to craft out, start to craft out what is your 100-word story? Is your 100-word story? Here's what David wrote back.
Speaker 2:Oh, one other thing, two things. One bolded Interesting to me first. Right, so we'll talk about and talked about for 14 years, building your own life. I'm truly blessed in that. There's a lot of interesting things going on in my life. I'll show you sort of a schematic here in a second. It's really hard to have a bad, a totally bad day, right, because then everything would have to be going wrong and Sammy will tell you. There's no day where everything is going wrong and we're really good at this.
Speaker 2:So one of our core values at Ben Glass Law is confidence, right, and it's okay to say and we say to clients we're really good at this, actually, all right, you are in the right place. I say to you we're really good at this. What you're going to be seeing and feeling and experiencing here, we're actually really good at. We have changed lives. We are changing lives and we are unabashedly unashamed to say that and to let you know. And if you can't say that about your own practice and about your own life, you don't have the confidence or somebody else is holding you back. Well, I want you to get there, okay, because it's important, because clients are coming to you and they they're thrust into our world of legal and go shopping for a lawyer for eight months usually right and they want to know that they're in a place where they're going to be taken care of by somebody who is really good at this. All right. So David writes back and this is so sad. Can't argue with that. I lost a 20-year marriage. I had a stroke. I missed out on years of my kids' lives before going solo due to 100-hour work weeks and he said congrats, and I say that sincerely and I hope one day that he's at an event like this.
Speaker 2:I represent in our disability, in our ERISA disability practice. I get to represent a lot of CEOs, cfos, lawyers and doctors and the saddest thing, honest to God, is representing big law lawyers who describe 100-hour work weeks, who describe working 40 days in a row for someone who never says thank you. I talk to sort of our next generation, as I'm looking for another ERISA lawyer and I'm going to go into the defense world and poach that lawyer from the defense industry. And so we've talked to a bunch of them who are really good, we perceive them to be really good, and they all hate their lives. Nobody ever says thank you. Their pat on the back for doing well in a case is to get their bills cut and get another case to go to right. So they're miserable and my view is and I talk about this a lot in my new book, play Left Full Back, which we'll talk about here in a little bit my view is that that's just a crime, right, and there's no one in this room.
Speaker 2:So two things Everybody in this room, including me, has been somewhere along that gap at some point. There are times I talked a lot last year and I talk in the book about you know black days, right Hard times, about you know black days, right Hard times. So just know that we've all been there to some extent some point in our lives. But what we're trying to do here is to help you, no matter where you are, find that path back out.
Speaker 1:That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on, subscribe, leave a review and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies and stories from the trenches? Visit greatlegalmarketingcom or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
