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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. 240 – One Room Can Change Your Life
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One room can change the trajectory of your life. Ben Glass shares three experiences that transformed his family, business, and future—and why showing up with an open mind can expose you to the idea, person, or opportunity you didn't know you needed.
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.
Why Conferences Can Transform You
SPEAKER_00Here's more from the renegade lawyer Ben Glass. Very, very certainly, very definitely, a conference like this coming at the right time to the right mindset can absolutely change the trajectory of a
A Concert That Led To Adoption
SPEAKER_00life. It's happened to me three times. I wrote about two of them, I think, in play left fullback, March 8, 2002. Five kids and a dog going to a Christian music concert where Sandy's been on in my ear for years about adoption. Stephen Curtis Chapman concert, that that two hours at night absolutely changed the trajectory of our lives. Less than a year later, we were in Beijing adopting our Kevin. Our Kevin, I mean, it's hard to for those of you who've been around a long time. Like, I only have and one 18-year-old, everyone else is, most everyone else is out. My 21-year-old is still in the house. But like this is an all new time for us. But that concert at that moment, it wasn't a seminar, it wasn't a conference, but it absolutely changed everything about our lives.
The Legal Marketing Breakthrough Moment
SPEAKER_00A couple years later, I went to my first Dan Kennedy conference. Now, this is, I've I'm at this point, I'm a few years into my solo practice. I had left a firm after 12 years or so. I'd been hanging with Dan for a bit, had not been to see him live, settled a case, had some time, had some money, got my car, drove to Cleveland, right? I didn't really know what to expect. Sat there for three days, and and my head was was just exploding, like three days of no sleep, because it just churns all night long. And in that conference, on yellow legal pads, probably what I was writing on, I got the idea for and the and the the confidence in the confidence, momentum, and information to start Great Legal Marketing. And that's October 2004 and in February 2005, we launched Great Legal, I launched Great Legal Marketing. And when I look back at that old stuff, like we didn't know what the hell we were doing, actually, we just did it, right? I just kind of made it up, made up a mastermind group, invited people to it, right? Got a handful of people to start and learned a lot as we went along. And of course, the teacher always learns the best. So at every step of the way, we had to get better and better and better. But if I had not driven, taken the time to drive to Cleveland, Ohio, to this crappy hotel, because Dan's famous for doing stuff in crappy hotels with 75 other people. And I knew I was in a different world. And I knew there was a DNA connection to me and the other people in that room because they were thinking like, like, I had these thoughts about why do we do things this way all the way, just because that's the way we've always done it. That didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. But I could not articulate a vision out of that for my practice until I was
Finding Hope During A Family Crisis
SPEAKER_00there. In September of 2012, um, we or Sandy and I were at a really deep dark place in our lives, as we we one of our child children really, really struggled with the post-effects of her being raised for 12 years in an orphanage. And we had really come uh almost within weeks of of having to um send uh our child off to what they call residential living, like out of our house where she could be safe and where, you know, I didn't know what else would be where she could be safe. Um we uh Sandy heard about this woman. She'd listened to some, uh it wasn't podcasts, I don't think back then, listened to some CDs and read a book or two, and she said, Oh my god, there's this conference going on in in um down Nashville, Tennessee. Let's go. So we got some babysitters, flew down to Nashville three days. Same thing, same thing. I'm sitting in there, and the first morning, I'm like, holy sh. There's 250 people in this room who understand exactly where we are. There's people that have harder problems. Like I thought we thought like this is really tough for us. There's people that have a lot harder problems over here. Oh my gosh, they're putting some on stage to talk about hope and to talk about techniques and strategies and people and resources. And our daughter never did have to go to um, you know, to um uh being homed outside of our home. And today, I mean, she's she lives with us, she's productive, she works, she makes about 50k a year grooming dogs. Uh, I I can vision myself one day in the future being the co-owner of a salon because I see a lot of things that could be fixed in the thing that they're doing. But that's if I had not gone down there to that seminar and listened and paid attention and gone there with an open mind, you know, very humble, and say, I just don't know. I don't know the answers here. Um, uh our lives would have been very different and a lot harder.
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