Ep. 227 – How to Be an Icon: The Mindset Behind Extraordinary Law Firms

In this special episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, we revisit Ben Glass's keynote, "How to Be an Icon," recorded live at the 2024 Hero Icon Event.

While marketing strategies and technology continue to evolve, the principles behind extraordinary leadership remain timeless.

In this keynote, Ben challenges law firm owners to think beyond tactics and focus on what truly drives long-term success: mindset, leadership, culture, and purpose. He shares why the greatest barrier to growth isn't a lack of marketing—it's the beliefs we hold about what's possible.

You'll learn:

• Why your mindset determines the future of your firm
• How to build a culture that attracts and retains exceptional people
• Why empowering your team creates exponential growth
• How systems and leadership outperform hustle
• The questions every law firm owner should ask before pursuing the next stage of growth

Whether you're building your first million-dollar practice or leading an established firm, this keynote will challenge you to redefine success and build a business that supports the life you truly want.

Recorded live at the 2024 Hero Icon Event.

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.

Transcript

Pay Goals And Employee Ownership

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Here's more from the renegade lawyer Ben Glass.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Now, what I want to do is bring back to the stage to talk with you the first part about how to be an icon, the next stage of growth in your law firm. Another round of applause because he always deserves it. Ben Glass.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Okay. Thank you for that question, Steve. So we have a non-lawyer employee that we have tracked out to where she can earn a quarter of a million dollars working for us. We're not there yet, but we know exactly what we need to do to achieve that. Right? And we talk she's managing my risk of disability side of my practice, right? Ellen, you know, Ellen. Um it's not there yet, but one of the questions that we ask our leadership team, lawyers and non-lawyers, is what do you want to be making this year, three years, five years, ten years? Not many people ask their non-lawyer employees leadership team that question. It doesn't mean that just because somebody says a number that they're gonna achieve it. But I can help you achieve whatever you want if you have clarity about what it is you want to achieve. I'm gonna ask a lot of great questions, and you're gonna be required to do a lot of thinking too, because you know how the money flows, you know how we make money, where it is, what we need to do. And I'm empowering you, is the conversation we have. I'm empowering you to create your own life and your own compensation. That's a pretty cool place to be. It doesn't start at ground zero. This requires culture. We'll talk about that, right? It requires confidence in your numbers, right? It requires conf uh uh entrepreneurial thinking on the employees part because this isn't a deal where just because you've been around for X number of years, you get to make X number of dollars. That deal is like that's the status quo. That's the old way of doing things, and it makes no sense. It's not rational at all. You know, and we've shed employees over the year who thought that just because I've been with you for a number of years, it means I should make X dollars. Like, there's like my question is back, why? Why? Why is that why is that a true fact, right? So uh I saw the shock on your face, but the better thing to think about is like, how do we how do we do that? Because if you have a wonderful employee and you can fulfill their financial dreams and you empower them with the ability to figure out how to help you get there, then you're just the lawyer guy. You're just the leader, and it's a great, it's a great place to be. All right.

Mindset As The Growth Filter

SPEAKER_00 2:49

So um, so this morning has been a lot about mindset, and I'm gonna talk to you a little bit more now about thinking, thinking like an icon. And you might say, well, crap, you know, let me get to the meat. I think this is really, really important. And already on the break, a couple of folks came up to me to say, you know, either thank you for something I heard in the last year or two years ago from you really changed my life about this part of it, about the mindset part, or something I even heard this morning about this part. The mindset part is important. And I think it is important because it now becomes the filter through which everything else that we do for the next couple of days comes because it is a it is a fire hose, right? I mean, you'll have uh Gill M members telling you, you know, five different people talking about five different great things they're done, and you're trying to wrap your arms around, geez, this all sounds really cool. I won't I want to do all of it right for now for my practice, like by next week, like Ben said, right? But and now we're gonna filter it through what do I want my life to be like, right? And we're gonna talk about how do we, how do we prioritize? And that's what I'll do Saturday. How do we prioritize all of these, all of these ideas? So, so we'll begin sort of where we where we um left off this morning, which is thinking about, you know, what if what if every person's life that you touched was made better, not just because your legal skills, because you're good lawyers, right? I mean, whatever you do in family law and and uh DUI defense and personal injury, whatever it is, like we got good lawyers here in great legal marketing, and you're competent and excellent at what you do, and you help people get that. But what if we have this bonus where every single person who came in contact with their lives are made better, and then think about what if I didn't have to do all of that myself? Like, what if my team was so good and so aligned? I'll give you a really quick example. It's kind of neat. Um, I learned the difference this year between uh shipping by freight and shipping by other traditional methods like UPS and and um FedEx and stuff. And we had a uh a uh a shipment of something that was big and heavy boxes shipping by freight coming to us. And we're on the second floor, and now we have space on the second floor and the third floor of this three-story building. And shipping by freight means the guy comes up to your lobby and says, your shit is outside. And I go, well, that's awesome. Like, bring it up because I don't do that. This is shipping by freight. It means I leave it at the front door. I go, cool, well, all right, uh, well, get out your dolly and let me do it. I have no dolly. I'm just leaving it by the front door. And then, you know, I'm like, well, who's a brain child that figured this out, right? So, but the FedEx guy, one of the FedEx guys that comes to our office, he's around, he's listening to my because my conversation is, because I'm like, let me get this straight. If this was a 50-story building, um, you'd be telling me you just leave it like by the loading dock and I gotta get it. He goes, Yeah, that's right. He says, I don't, it doesn't matter to me. But the FedEx guy is overhearing this. FedEx guy goes, no problem, Ben, I got this. It's very nice of you. It's really heavy. It's not your stuff. Uh, you're busy, you got, you got people to meet and packages to get delivered. He says, No problem. The FedEx guy, of course, he's he's uh wearing a Ben Glaslaw shirt. Because one day he's in the office and he's got a nice purple Nike shirt on. And I said, That's awesome. Did FedEx buy that for you? He goes, No, FedEx doesn't buy me anything. I bought this myself. I learned a little bit about his immigrant story and and you know, his it is so cool. I mean, this is a side issue, but so cool when you talk to uh these folks who are, you know, um who are workers who do the really I mean, we sit in an office all day and they slap packages and stuff, and to hear his story and talk about how great America is and all the opportunities he has and come from the east side of Africa. But anyway, I go, well, dude, FedEx won't buy you shirts. This is I'll buy you as many as you need, right? If I bought you a shirt, would you wear it? He goes, man, I'd wear it every single day. And so now he comes into my office and every and he doesn't wear our shirt every day, but he's always like, Mr. Glass, I got your shirt on, right? And so because we just saw the opportunity, you know, all the FedEx and the Amazon guys who come to our office, they know now they don't even like they bring the package in, they make their way around to the kitchen, they know where the fully stocked snacks and drinks are for them. And now I'm sure that some of them are timing their runs, like for either for lunch or for the afternoon snack break, right? Just because we look for these opportunities to bring other people's lives up. And I know, I know that I ask them sometimes like, does anybody else in your route like even ever talk to you? Because no, they don't. We love coming to your office. So I think that comes back to you. There's a lot of science though about doing random acts of kindness and what it brings to you, the dopamine release, the other hormones are released. But if your team gets got really, really good at that, you become unstoppable.

Purpose And Making Lives Better

SPEAKER_00 8:01

And I know you thought, you know, if you've been here before, you know this isn't all just about marketing. But the question I want you to ask is why are you here? And I don't mean like here in Arlington, Virginia in the Renaissance for two and a half days. How many have given like real thought to like why am I here on earth? Like, what is purpose? And I know that when I first started to be introduced to thinking like that, that was a block for me. I'm just one of, I don't know how many billions of people are on the earth. Like, like I was just struggling to do the things to get you know the revenue per employee up, right? To not uh destroy my own business by hiring too many people without even knowing what scaling meant. But I think that again, having a coach helps with this. Um, having somebody who can lead you through it, um, to give some thought to like, what are you what are you really good at like doing that moves the world? All right. And I'm unabashedly say that, you know, my purpose is to inspire others. I mean, like I, my DNA has turned into be someone who, if you come in contact with me any place during the day, I'm gonna try to raise your life up a little bit. I mean, even if you're like on the other team, I mean, I, you know, I talk to claims adjusters, I talk to lawyers, um, all the time. And we just have a lot of, we have a lot of good friends, you know, across the across the industry. And whether I'm talking to a client or whether I'm talking to someone who's opposing me, you know, we always somehow just go to talking about life a little bit, right? I'm curious, genuinely curious about their lives. Sometimes push them and kid with them about like the good ones, like, come, I've got office. Like, if I want to come over to this side, I've got an office for you over here. I, you know, thinking this way, I have discovered just raises your feeling, your internal feeling of happiness. And being comfortable with whatever it is, and it can be in service, it can be, I'm just a great lawyer. I mean, there's lawyers who just like just give me a file and let me be in a courtroom every single day, right? And that's what drives me and energizes me and raises the power of the world. And so we think about that because then when we hear about all these other tools, we try to figure out if that's my place, if my place is being in a courtroom every single day, helping people, say in Virginia, maybe in the general district court, where you know, thousands of people come by to do it's you know, the lower level cases and the lower level crimes. If that's your place, well then let's figure out how we do it. Let's figure out, we can help you figure out how to build, you know, a six-figure, seven-figure practice based upon that, getting you in court. There's a way to do it. There are models to do that. We know people who are doing it, right? Because nobody else in the profession is saying that this is even possible. Like in most seminars you go to and it's all about the doing of the thing, and that's cool. No one's ever talking about your happiness. And how do we craft the doing of the thing to your happiness? So finding that, whether it's through study, mentorship with gurus or whatever, I've never had somebody who's kind of gone through the process of starting to deeply think about why they're here, come back and say that was a stupid idea. Like, like, no, that really didn't um didn't really move me, and if they're serious about it. All right. And again, so do your give yourself permission to do work that gets you excited. You know, for many, many years, um, you know, from the time I was in my first firm that I grew up in when I was a young lawyer through many years into my practice, uh, did a lot of medical malpractice work, right? And it just, and that was good. And I can remember like about a year and a half ago, like doing the disbursement on the on the check for the settlement and thinking this is the last med and malcase I will ever be involved in. Like that whole world for changed. As my world was changing, and I got interested in doing other different things. That whole world where you're tied to long trials and multiple experts and multiple lawyers on the other side, that just wasn't right. It wasn't hap happiness for me. I was good at it. I could get clients money, right? But it I found it the stress level is just increasingly high, increasingly, and just weren't a match for the rest of my life. So we just shed it and we've got good referral partners that we send these cases to. Um, and this is this is uh, you know, everyone thinks of changing the world, few think of changing themselves, and fewer realize how hard it is to change yourself.

Stop Trying To Change Others

SPEAKER_00 12:45

This has been the biggest thing for me to learn, even in dealing with relationships in my own family. So I'll get on the phone with my coach and I'll recount she said this, I said this, she said this, we got pissed off at each other, blah, blah, blah. And he says, just as stupid. Like told me the same thing, the same exact story for years and years, different situation, same thing. Like, do you really think you're gonna change the other? I'm proving that that's impossible, right? What can I change? I can change my thinking, I can change how I respond, I can s change how I see the event as part of my life. Um, and that's really hard. And the first place we want to go all is we want to change the other. If there's an employee, right, who's not working out, we want to change them. You know how hard it is to change somebody's DNA. I mean, someone who's not there to work hard and it's not fully aligned with your purpose. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've heard after we fired somebody, Ben, man, that this this person, um, you know, he thought all this stuff you talked about was bullshit, right? Like he was always talking about you behind your back. Right? I so no amount of teaching, lecturing, showing, giving opportunity to people can change their DNA. I had, I have to change. Now, my change in that situation is you're God, right? Getting better at recognizing that, and you're out, and let me replace you with somebody who is already aligned with what we do. Okay, does that does that make sense? I mean, that was you know, and if you think about it in your own life now, like who am I in sort of constant, and it could be like a teenager, because they're really good at this. I sit back and I watch my wife, one of my daughters, each one of them wanting to not leave the room without getting the last word in. I mean, it's and when you recognize what's going on, it's comp because I'm in the other room, it's almost comical. And you can just hear the the raising of the anxiety, but neither one wants to leave the room not having the last word, and yet the change can be I'm good with you having the last word. I'm good with ending the argument, right? Um we talked about this a bunch this morning, right? Being so so thinking like an icon really is working things through this filter of putting me first, right? It's not wrong to get yourself in order. It's not wrong to look for the things that will make your life better, and the best at it, look for win-win relationships. So I heard a line I can't remember who said it, and it was really, it was really, really smart. It was like it was we you're working with your spouse, let's say, and you're argue, argue, argue, argue, and you always want to be right, you always want to be right. Well, then this person said, Well, who wants to be married to somebody who's always wrong? Right? So, yeah, that makes that made a lot of sense to me. Right. So um, let's talk

The Ten-Year Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 16:01

about this. Charlie talked about this a little bit. Um, kind of what we have seen over the years is for most firms that are so most firms in a GLM world are maybe one to three, maybe five lawyers. Um, Paul Hernandez, your firm is is bigger, and you know, bless you for being here because I think that's harder to move 65 people. But we have other firms that are 50 and 60 and 65 people. Um, but most firms, there's there is this change. You can get to that million dollar mark by getting really good at the marketing, really, really good at getting the cases in, really good if if you do work on an hourly or flat fee basis and raising your raising your rates and all of that stuff. The questions that you have to ask yourself always is for whatever it is in my life, would I be happy in 10 years if nothing changes? Let's stop there. So I'm 62, I'm still refereeing, I still referee high school soccer. It's getting harder, right? It's just it just age. But if at 72 I could still do that level of games and feel fit and um happy about it, like I would be ecstatic about that. And I that's that's what I want to be able to do. So in order to be able to do that, I now have to think, A, I'm happy. I'm happy not moving up in the level of difficulty of games, right? There's young referees who are really good and who want to move up and have maybe pro careers, right? I'm happy at that level. But now the facts of reality are there's a lot of work I need to do in season and off-season mentally and physically to be able to sustain that level. All I'm trying to do is get you to think about, so whatever it is in your life, think about that question first. Would I be happy if nothing changed? Second thing is now we talk about a law firm. Okay, yeah, yeah, my law firm is fine. I'm good with the money. I'm good with the way uh the size and the clients we get. Now you have to give a real hard look to the facts of reality about the changing world, right? And if I stay the same with these number of people with this technology, with the type of services we're offering, right? Can I still be the same in 10 years? So I don't worry about it too much, but my son Brian is thinking about you know, cars crashing into each other or not, right? Will that still be around um long term? Um there were many firms, sadly, when COVID hit that could not, quote, pivot. You know, there were I was on list search where people are like, where do I buy laptops for my team? How do I get to hook me up with the technology to allow my team to work from home? All right. So they weren't even up with sort of current um technology. But what I want you to do is just think about and spend time carving out what what do I know about the world today? What do I know, what can I predict, reasonably predict about the world 10 years from now? And am I happy? And I'll tell you that right now we're so Brian and I debate this in the Ben Glass Law world. So we just finished our budgeting for next year. So we, you know, and unashamedly, we had like our best year ever this year. We'll have a great year next year based upon the stuff we have in the pipeline. We're looking like, hey, we could go to uh, you know, double and triple revenue in five years. Okay, cool. Look how much money that would be. And then we stop and we go, okay, what would we need in terms of people? We know how many calls come in, how many people we need to feel the calls, how many people need to work the cases. We know average value of cases. So now it's just a math problem, right? So if we're gonna go, let's say we want to go for the two of us have $5 million of revenue, all right. How hard do we want to work to build that team and infrastructure to get us there? And it and and we have not yet quite answered that question for ourselves, right? But that's not my point. The point is not necessarily the answer, the point is the process that you would go through to think about what would need to be done in order to achieve it. And the best way to go through that process, as Charlie said, is on paper with white paper, right? And somebody who's good at spreadsheets and stuff, and someone is good at extracting all the data you have in the firm to help you, and that's not where my strength is in data and spreadsheets, but Brian's really good at, and Joe Mann's really good at it. So I trust and rely on them. But the but the process of not just saying, well, I want to be a million-dollar law firm or a three million or a five million or a $10 million law firm. Okay, that's really cool. I would have X number of dollars. Would I be happy? Well, how do I know if I'm gonna be happy unless I know how much work it's gonna be, how many people I'd have to manage, how hard it is to hire them and keep the culture and do all that stuff. That's the process that I want you to get to think about. That's what icons, this icon level sort of thinks about. And yeah, it's hard. I mean, it's hard work. We spend a ton of time in our firm, um, quarterly, all day meetings, a two-day annual retreat out of the office, and weekly meetings working on that. Like working on all the parts of that. And that's time we're not spending on the cases. Um and so I'm not saying you have to do that because you might be perfectly happy. Will I be happy in 10 years or nothing changes? The answer is yes, that's really cool. Let's just figure out what we need to do to keep the status quo. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, the point is that it's your choice. You make the decision for this. You don't let anyone else go, you know, you should be a five million dollar law firm. You should have offices in different areas across the state, you should be a regional force up and down the East Coast. No, no, no, no. You get to decide, but there's a process for that. All right. So for those of you who have gotten to the $1 million mark, I mean you did it. You did it by marketing and sales. If you're not there, that's the path, right? Is being is being ruthless. And ruthless means I'm paying attention, all right, about getting the marketing flow and then the conversion from prospect to client really, really good. And so those who struggle to get there is usually at least one of these three reasons. One is they think just because I saw a tool and the tool was pitched to me that all I have to do is buy the tool and magic will happen. Never works that way. Tools are great, right? Go down up and down the aisles of Home Depot, tools are great. But not for me, because I'm not a tool guy and I don't have plans to build anything in that world. So they underestimate really how hard it is. Now, it's hard, but we have the models. CrossFit is hard, but we have all sorts of progression models. You can't do a one, you can't do a pull-up. There's progressions to be able to get to do one. You can't do six, there's progression. So there's a path. And what people, many people are unwilling to do because they want to shortcut the path, is they're unwilling to trust these proven models. And again, we've never been the ones to go, hey, you'll come learn about this, and we'll sell you pay-per-click, we'll sell you a website. Like I didn't want to be in that world at all because I wanted to be the happiness factor for me is being in the world where I teach you how to go and to buy and to implement and to use that stuff so that you can make the best choice. And I'm not responsible. Like, like this whole deal is we have so many models of success here that if you're not there and you haven't come and asked all the questions and tapped and got on the calls and out and tapped all the resources we have, it's not my fault. It's not my fault at all, right? It's your fault. And usually we can find something, something there that's not being tended to sort of ruthlessly. That's the second second part is you feel time. Yeah, this does take time away from cases. So part of what we get good at is being very deliberate about the cases that we're letting in the door. Again, Kellen Park's example from this morning of, and I told Kell Kellen later, it's like, dude, you just saved you and your friend like a big headache, right? And there were times in the past he probably would have taken it. There are times in the past I've taken that client. Like we've found, like, we have almost like a no-fly list almost for lawyers. Like they've just been like most of them a payment butt to represent, right? And so my my antenna is really up when lawyers come to represent. Represented a bunch of them now in the disability world. Um, you know, and in that that has really worked out. But boy, you start to show me that because of your status, you think that I owe you something. Dude, turn around, yellow pages, go find somebody else, right? Um and the last sort block is irrefusable to to uh be accountable to anyone. I found this too. Like when when I when my numbers are crappy and my life was unhappy and my practice was dark, like that, the last thing I wanted to do was to go to a coach and go, here's my here's my numbers. Like this is god-awful. Like, so you get kind of embarrassed about even showing that to anybody. And so the one thing I wish I had done earlier was had the courage to do that. And and then what I've learned over the years, of course, is that there's a lot of people whose books are crappy, whose numbers are crappy. And so there's, and that's why, you know, 60% of lawyers that report from a few years ago are generally unhappy about the profession. So you're in with a decent crowd, right? So, so kind of shedding that fear and now having somebody or some group that you're accountable to who will get you on the phone, right? As Charlie said, you don't want to show up at the next meeting being embarrassed because you haven't done what you said you were gonna do, right? That's really, really important because who else will it be? If you're the leader of the firm, right, who do you who do you go and show this stuff to? Right. And if you're only showing it to yourself, it's really easy to go. I'll get to that next week. It's not maybe maybe I'll just look at it at the end of the year when I look at my tax returns, and then we'll maybe just worry about it then. Okay. So being courageous to take your issues, finding someone that you have confidence in in a confidential way, and being able to rumble in the issues, I mean you will learn that good Lord, most of the people most people are there. And certainly everybody kind of starts there. Nobody starts, I don't think, with a magic practice. All right. Now, this is hard, this is all. What I'm describing is hard work. Again, I like to go back to CrossFit because it's it's fun. Like I kind of almost hate the classes because it's hard work, right? But I do want to be in a guy, so CrossFit's mantra is you know, when you're 100, you're either going to be in a nursing home because you can't get yourself up off the floor or you're gonna be independent. Well, I'd rather be independent, like when I'm 100. I want to be a referee when I'm 100 too. So we do the hard work, right? But now the hard work at this icon level is different. Now it's different from because there, now presumably now the marketing is filling the pipeline. And actually the challenge now is how do I shape the marketing to refine it so I get um you know more of the good cases, because in any practice area, if you have more cases that will pay you more money, like that's usually less chaotic than uh a lot of these cases that will pay you less money. Again, for some people, that's the perfect life, right? For some people, mass practice, lots of, for example, lots of auto cases at a certain level, they're set up to do that, got teams to it. It's no stress, they never go to court, never go to trial, right? Um who are we to criticize that? I mean, if a client is happy, who are we to criticize that? Right? We have no place for that. And that's that's um that's good for that. But so now this is new learning, all right.

Scaling Requires People And Patience

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So this journey from million two, a million five on up really is a lot about learning how to scale this whole operation. I now believe that that journey is much more about the people. We'll talk about this. It's about the people that you get on the team than it is about the marketing, because again, the marketing is working. The marketing can be dialed in or dialed out, and that's relatively formulaic, right? I mean, when you when you you gotta build it, you gotta have foundations in place, but then it becomes relatively formal. Like, you know, our discussions are okay, pay-per-click ads into this part of Virginia, how much are we gonna spend? What are we gonna get out of it? Pay-per-click ads for disability practice into this part of the fourth circuit outside of Virginia. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Like, that's that's dialing in and dialing out. But I couldn't do that unless we had a really, really good team. And that's the hardest thing, I think. And we we don't make as many mistakes as we used to. Um, we've learned, Ben has learned to be very patient about this. Um, we've learned to be more, much more open and direct about who we are, what we're for, and what we're looking for, and what what it would take for you to be divorced from us, right? And we've gotten a lot better about making those decisions sooner in the life of someone's relationship with us and getting them out. I thought, so one mistake, I thought COVID would like give us a lot of opportunities to to make the team even better, right? To get great people, right? Let's be able to have to work, like, oh my God, Mana from heaven, right? We found that to be challenging. We found it looking for lawyers and for staff that it was challenging. I think in part, okay, in part of their getting payment from the government that made it a little hard. But I think the big thing was kids staying at home, right? Kids staying at home made it challenging for both mom and dad to be able to go out into the workforce. So that was interesting. Um, so it's, I mean, to me, it's all about it's it's it is so much about building a great team and it's getting uh my ego out of the way. And the big part for me was nobody could ever do this part of the practice as well as I could, right? No one could take a deposition, you know, and ask all the right questions. Like I'm the only one in the world who could ask the right questions, right? No one could try a case, no one could write the big block was no one could write these ERISA briefs, right? This federal court niche practice area that we've developed in. Well, once I got that out and then proved that I was totally wrong about that, that there's a lot of really smart people spread out all over the country, and we have a couple in Canada who are good writers, right? Who can put formidable briefs together, to which I then come and refine, right? I direct the theme and I direct the editing, really, of a lot of the brief writing we do. Like that was really cool. But I would never have discovered that unless I had a coach who said to me, when I would say, nobody can, nobody can, nobody can. This is too hard. You go, how do we know? He's asking, he's asking the the how or the why question. Why do you say that? What are the facts of reality that tell you that? Well, it was nothing but my ego that said nobody could do this as well as I could. And so we developed a great system for teaching people how to do it, teach smart people how to do this. All right. So, so that's a that's a huge block, right? Getting your ego, like no one could do it as good as I can. I need to have my hands in everything, right? Like, even like this whole event, we got cool software, we got a cool stage. Literally, and you can tell, like I do my my own PowerPoints because Charlie's are all fancy and mine are black and white, because I don't know how to do all that stuff, and I don't really care. I don't really care. The button says enhanced PowerPoint. I go, nope, I just want regular PowerPoint, right? That's a big thing. So let's just talk about we'll talk about the uh uh the four letters, and and I have to give Charlie So we're sitting at Titan's Mastermind, we're in Austin, Texas. Like, I have no idea, right? And and we're listening to these really smart people, and Charlie's like, oh my god. Yeah, I see him the next morning. He's like, I think he's like, I was up all night recreating this thing. So and then we both start to give sort of deep thought to this thing I talked about earlier this morning, which is a lot of people that teach marketing, right? Marketing is relatively formulaic, like we can figure it out. Nobody's talking about this stuff, right?

Influence Built Through Daily Choices

SPEAKER_00 33:12

So when we talk about Ocon, we're talking about first influence, right? Giving ourselves permission to exercise our will on the world rather than having the world tell us what we need to do, right? And in doing so, improving the lives, the lies of everyone. Now, there's a lot of people whose lives we could improve. And I'm not talking about giving out all your money or doing hundreds of hours of pro. I'm not talking about any of that stuff, right? There may be a place for it in your life. I'm just talking about every single person that we interact with, we interact with the positivity of wow, you know, and it's as simple as this. It's as it is oftentimes as simple as that other person having the feeling that you're genuinely interested in the conversation that you are having with them. It's kind of simple. And when it's real, it just it's it's it is so cool. And so I would like everybody to just think about this simple habit change and get to be more deliberate. Because when you get to, when you get good at it with strangers that you meet in the store delivering the packages to you, to your house, to your business, whatever, and you convert it, and everyone on your team feels that they are genuinely listened to. Now, again, just because I empower you to tell me how much money you want to make in five years doesn't mean that we're gonna be able to achieve it, but I'm gonna put the thinking on you, right? Um, so not everything that people ask for, they get, but to know that they are heard and your whole team gets us really quick examples. So when COVID came, right? Um, and you know, do you work at home? Do you work at the office? We didn't like many firms came up with rules, and there were firms that had rules and laptops, and what did they have on the laptops? They had keystroke trackers, right? To make sure their teams were working. Like, okay, uh, my team doesn't need a keystroke, keystroke tracker. But what we said was this was here's the deal. Like, you're all smart, you can figure out what's right for your life. You need you need to tell us because for some people, working at home was not optimal. They wanted to come into the office. We have a lot of space. Perfect. You can come into the office. For other people, it was impossible. And for other people, they weren't gonna be able to give us the eight, the eight o'clock to five o'clock or nine o'clock to five o'clock. But they would work. I mean, we'll talk about tomorrow, you know, in actions and managing by KPIs and that sort of stuff. But we trust them, we have this great relationship. So we empowered them. Tell us what's perfect for you. When it came time and it and we found out that schools weren't going back, now that's a whole nother inch. We've got a couple single moms with children, right? So we didn't, so Brian and I didn't go, well, even though Brian's got kids, so two parents and kids, right? We didn't go, well, here, we're the smartest ones in the room. We can think of the rule and let's just see what the rule is. If you don't like it, you can leave. And we said, you figure it out. Like what would be perfect for you? Again, I don't know that we actually be able to do it. We were, but I need you to think about it. All right. So let's be more deliberate. And that's the level that folks who are leaders, they think and act on that level. All

Culture Systems And KPI Leadership

SPEAKER_00 36:36

right. Second thing is culture. Everybody energized to come to work on Monday. I've got a young lady in our office who is awesome. She works uh from home a couple days a week, single mom, bunch of kids, recently separated from uh um her partner. Um, and she tells me, you know, in my last job, I used to spend Sunday nights crying because I had to go in to work in this cesspool of a place. And I love coming to work here. And I know our clients and our prospects who talk to this young lady, they love her, right? I think that of our current BGL team, everybody is like 90, 95 towards 100 in terms of the place they come to energizes them. Right? It's not, and my next slide is not because we have pinball machines and do sort of things that many companies think as culture, but it's because we actually have this mutual respect. Um, and we try and they come knowing that I believe part of my mission is to grow them, right? Because if they're the same person a year from now as they were or when they come to work for us, like that's not good for me and it's not good for them. Right. So we have this open, open relationship. That's culture, people who are energized. So again, simple question are you energized by your practice? Great. Is your team, do you think your team is actually energized by coming there? The benefit to you is you get somebody who's good and who makes you enough money that you can pay them maybe a quarter million dollars a year at some point if that, you know, if the model's out right, they stay forever. They're not going to be lured away by anybody else. I mean, anyone that leaves us has to go into a real-world workplace, like with rules and with with uh nowhere near the level of autonomy that we give them. You have to have operations systems. Uh, and I'll show you tomorrow, I'll show you sort of what our operations manual looks like. But 90% of what we do, of how a case processes through from the time the call comes to the time the case is over, is routine. I mean, there's a standard for it. You know, most of it doesn't require, Brian or me, or or now Lisa, who we hired over from GEICO, um, doesn't require like our particular expertise, because we have done the work to create an operations manual that covers 80% of what it takes to run the law firm, and that people understand they've had some input into, and that they followed that. So a lot of firms that are at that million and below, 1.2 and below, they don't have like it's chaos. As we were chaos, really before, as we grew, we were chaotic because we didn't really, we weren't as good as we are now in terms of having operations manuals in place. Um, and then numbers, right? Everyone knows what's expected of them. We try to manage by the numbers and not by personalities. It makes decision making in terms of uh firing or improvement plans really easy. All right. So we're not talking about any of this stuff, right? Um the biggest one that you'll hear sort of um from marketing gurus is boy, you know, as you got 3,000 followers on Facebook, all these people on Instagram, and you're getting all these brand impressions because you're running YouTube apps, then you're awesome. You'll be great. Pay us $50,000. Like, that's not what we're talking about here. That's not real influence. Um, all right. So four steps. Um biggest thing, and why we have spent so much time this morning is your belief system is the biggest obstacle to all of this, right? A good business coach can help you get through this, right? It's like, and it's gotta be the right one for you. So we've had uh, you know, uh our families had lots and lots of therapists, right? Some lasted a very short time, right? So they're all probably pretty smart in their in their realm, but finding that person that we worked well with, my kiddos worked well with, was really, really important. But that's the thing that you work on first, is your belief system the second is your skill sets. I was, I think I was talking to you, Paul, this morning about, you know, 65 people, great culture, 65 people under roof. That's a real social skill set. They don't teach in law school, they don't teach in the profession, but it's really, really important. So if you've gotten to a million, you're probably a good lawyer, you probably got some decent marketing, you have really good marketing in place. But to do this scaling thing is is it is now reading the articles in Harvard Business Review, and which I find like kind of hard to understand, right? But that's why I have Charlie. Um, but is is getting good at being this um this uh empathetic, um excellent in communication, um firm and confident in your own value system and what you want to do with your practice and your world and your life, and being able to communicate that well enough to attract people who are who are like, man, that sounds awesome. I want to be, I want to be there, right? So I'm not gonna force you in. I mean, it's the thing always political dialogue, right? It's none of it is about me trying to convince you in the wisdom of I got a great idea. It's all about demonizing, right? The other ideas that are out there. Um and so it that and that's a social skill, right? We've learned it. We so the whole world of corruption, which has been so hard for us, and it is, it is, it is good, it is good, and our in our lives are great, and my kids are wonderful, but the biggest thing we learned from that world was how to communicate better. Like, you know, how to change, and and that wasn't like changing the other. That was changing ourselves. That was learning that when you're dealing with a brain that's on hyperactivity and it's it's been you know stimulated for in survival mode for so many years, that brain is wired differently. And so now we had to change, right? We learned so much about communication, and we were blessed, blessed by that concert we went to with Stephen Kirst Chapman, because I don't think I would be as competent and confident about the communication with the team as if I hadn't been on that path, because I would have just done what every other lawyer always does. Um and so, and when you're good at this, now you've got a team that their belief systems change and their skills, and let me leave their skill sets change. So let me leave you

Beliefs Coaching And Closing

SPEAKER_00 43:08

with this. One thing that we do is um every other month we have a lunch, and it's called uh the lunch with Ben, philosophy of Ben, right? And it's like, you know, the wise man in the cave, and now we talk about some of our core values, and we'll have usually a question of the day. And we're not talking about cases or work or anything, we're talking about we're talking about life. And so the question of the day a couple of weeks ago was what would you what advice would you give your younger self? And we have everybody like chime in. So, and and when we have these, I mean you hear some things that you never would have heard if you're just talking about cases, even on a one-on-one, you never would have heard this. And and they they become our group becomes courageous in terms of telling some things that were there, they really make themselves vulnerable because we have this group trust. It's it's kind of weird, it's kind of like group therapy, but it's okay. I mean, we're we're good with that, they're good with that, and now they're able to take the Ben Glass Law brand of helping to raise everyone's life up a little bit. They take that out into every interaction they have clients with potential clients, with all the folks who come through our office, and that's what leads, you know, the OB to drag her clients over. And by the way, who will the OB think of if one of her clients is does get involved in an accident or has a problem with the insurance company? It's lunchtime. Um, we'll talk some more about some of these things. Um, and we talk about actions, but but um because because now there is a way, and we'll talk about tomorrow is a way to take all of this information and take the chaos of the world, synthesize it through concepts, add principles to it, get direct our thinking towards principles to figure out what action that we are going to take in the future. All right? It's high level, which is why it's icons. Um, and what I want you to just leave her with is, and probably every slide that I talk about uh today is and this weekend is just never feel guilty. So take some time to feel grateful for your life and everything that you have, but don't feel guilty about that. Don't feel guilty because people are watching you and they are learning from you even when you don't know that they are watching from you. And we can change the world. We are good lawyers, we are doing good for people, right? We're doing good for the system, but individually we're raising everyone's life up. And at the end of the day, I just think personally that's pretty cool. And people will go, uh, that's not for me, and they'll they'll leave and never come back. And I'm good with that too, because I'll find two more who are aligned with that want to know more about it. Okay, so now I know we're on lunchtime. So um I know that on the app, there's because I checked in last night. I go, is it room service or restaurant? They go, none. Um, so there's local restaurants. Charlie, do you do you have a microphone or okay? Cool, and we're back here in an hour. All righty. Thank you all so much. All right. Have a great lunch.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

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