Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
The Rise of a Phoenix Law Firm: Mark and Alexis Breyer’s Blueprint
Mark Breyer shares his inspiring journey of transforming a small law firm into a thriving practice with over 160 employees. The conversation highlights the significance of strategic marketing, strong team culture, and community engagement in achieving sustainable growth.
• Mark's early struggles with a small, stagnant firm
• The pivotal role of grassroots marketing in business transformation
• Strategies for building a strong, loyal team culture
• Effective intake and lead management practices
• Community engagement as a crucial marketing tool
• Future expansion plans and leveraging acquisition opportunities
Join us for insights that can reshape your legal practice and inspire growth!
Get your tickets for the 2025 Great Legal Marketing Summit Here.
____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn
What's up everybody and welcome back into another episode of Life Beyond the Briefs. I almost said a Friday episode, but I don't know if I'm going to release this episode on a Friday or a Tuesday. This is the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and build practices that they love showing up to on Mondays, and this episode is going to be a little bit of a takeover. I am digging through the recordings from the 2024 Great Legal Marketing Summit as we prepare to begin marketing for the 2025 Summit, which we are doing. If you haven't heard one of these episodes where I talk about this, yes, or you're not on our email list we are going to produce another summit my wife might kill me About October 23rd through the 25th. It'll be in Washington DC this year. You can get your tickets at GLMSummitcom. Get your tickets at GLMSummitcom. The price that you see today is the lowest and the best deal that you're going to get. Every year, our prices go from low to high and the bonus stack that we offer goes from high to low, and so this is not one of those events where you're going to look in a month and see a better deal than you got. I promise you that If you are interested in coming to an event where we talk about grassroots marketing, where we talk about growing your law firm but, more importantly, where the conversations you will have outside of the room with the other attendees lift you up instead of making you feel very, very small, this is the event for you. So, washington DC, october 23rd through the 25th. So this conversation that you're about to hear is a fireside chat between Ben and Mark Breyer. It took place on our stage at the Phoenix event in 2024.
Speaker 1:Mark operates the husband and wife law firm in Phoenix. Arizona joined Great Legal Marketing back 20 years ago now and at the time he had six or seven people. You'll hear him describe the firm at the time. They're operating firm that has over 160 employees now. They're one of the best advertisers in the Arizona market, not only for lawyers but just broadly, and you can see he and his wife, alexis, behind home plate at every Arizona Diamondbacks name because they have their name on the digital banner that sits behind the catcher.
Speaker 1:It's a pretty cool thing to see for a guy who I knew when he was operating a firm that only had six or seven employees If you have aspirations to grow your firm from six or seven employees to 160 employee behemoth, and that's not for everybody but it is for some lawyers. It's a great episode to listen to because it talks about all of the fundamental things that you have to get right to achieve that exponential growth that Mark and his wife Alexis have achieved. So this is a takeover episode. It is a bit of a left turn from what we usually produce and I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2:We started our firm in 1996. And for the first 12 years we tried everything. We cared deeply, we cared about our team, we cared about our clients, we cared about doing things the right way, and Alexis and I did some things well. I became a certified specialist. I about doing things the right way, and Alexis and I did some things well. I became a certified specialist. I handled some big cases. She's still the best negotiator I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2:We knew we had developed a good reputation among judges, among defense counsel, among people in the community. We heard lots of good things. We knew we were doing a lot of things well. So it was very frustrating to have grown, but not nearly as fast as we thought, to not be reaching the number of people we felt we should reach. It was just a frustrating time because we knew we were able to do more but we were stuck.
Speaker 2:And so Alexis decided, by the way, against my wishes, to send me to a great legal marketing event that I did not want to go to, and it changed our business and changed our life as a result and ultimately we went from seven or eight people to now over 160 team members. We're able to maintain, we believe our reputation as a firm of trial lawyers that fights for people, and we've been able to do more in the community than we ever could have done at that size To go from no marketing to one of the best known local brands in the state, not just among lawyers but among any local advertisers of any type to be able to be recognized and involved in so many different parts of the community. And it all started with what you can learn by listening to what Ben has to say, not just about how to make the phone ring, but how to answer that phone, how to build your team, how to create values and how to reach out and touch your clients, your team members, in the community. It all starts here.
Speaker 3:We met almost 20 years ago, so again, great Legal Marketing started in my daughter's bedroom, googling URLs that might fit Great Legal Marketing and I was getting. I was starting to speak about advertising and I don't know how.
Speaker 2:Oh, you said alexis saw us she probably saw it like in trial magazine. Does he still do? Do you still do this where all of your stuff has 97 arrows and big yellow things and like, is that I mean in a good way? Is that what you do?
Speaker 3:I don't, uh? No, I don't think so. But here's the deal. When you work with the youngins, they're like what do you mean? Direct mail advertising, right, what do you mean? We're going to run an ad in a magazine, like, are you old and I go? You know what? I built this company for 20 years on direct mail and running ads in trial lawyer journals and here we are. Yeah, so you mentioned a little bit on the video and thank you, that was very, very kind. I asked Mark's team to make me a sizzle reel about him. Right, but he makes a sizzle reel about Great Legal Marketing. But give us some idea, mark. I mean, if you've been here and you had the TV on, you probably have seen Mark, but there's a lot of lawyer ads running in my hotel room, just so you know.
Speaker 2:And here I thought we were alone.
Speaker 3:I was watching in DC Arizona Diamondbacks you know baseball games on TV and there's Mark's husband and wife legal team behind home plate and I'm trying to get a picture of it to send it to him. So you may well have heard of Mark. Maybe you've never heard of Mark if you're not out here in Arizona. But give us some idea, mark, of the size and scope you mentioned 160 under roof. Tell us a little bit more about the scope of the practice today and then we'll go back.
Speaker 2:All right. So we are right now Arizona only. We are days away from launching New Mexico and we have started the process of looking for practices in other parts of the country. But we are a single event only firm. I was talking out in the hall. I went to one MassTorts Made Perfect and came away more confused than when I headed to MassTorts Made Perfect, and so we feel like we are a group of trial lawyers. We've tried cases, cases.
Speaker 2:We are a large advertising firm. We are not similar to most large advertising firms not, I will just say, from my experience from most of the trial lawyers that I have met in the country that I respect are not part of large advertisers. I think there's probably reasons for that right. So the model of large advertiser is get the money, get it fast, don't work up the case. Churn, churn, churn. To put the money into more advertising is the chase for the almighty dollar. And then there's people who actually care about their clients and they work hard and they build it up, and so right now we try a lot of cases. We get cases referred to us from other people in the state uh, including insurance adjusters and defense counsel and a judge that we tried a case in front of recently and so hopefully we've built up, uh, some credibility in what we do.
Speaker 2:But in the end although we're obviously bigger than when alexis and I met you, I mean in the end we're still we'll talk about, we're a single event trial lawyer firm. We do, we don't do med mal and we don't do product. So it's basically roadway meaning car, truck, motorcycle, uh, bicycle, pedestrian or premise stuff, um, I mean pool. I mean if something horrible happens and it's someone else's fault, we'll get involved, except we, we don't. We bring someone else in to involved. Except we bring someone else in to do MedMal, we bring someone else in to do product.
Speaker 3:One of the things that strikes me as I look at the Arizona market I recently met some lawyers in Atlanta. It's just a huge, huge advertising dollars market is just the incredible number of cases, single event Cases and events that are out there. That's, that's mind-boggling. So give me a little bit of your mindset in terms of of. You know, you must not have reached out or maxed out in like the market right, because there's other law firms that do personal injury in Arizona that get cases that somehow that you don't get right.
Speaker 2:Lots of them Unfortunately the case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but lots of them. So.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's happening and I don't know what everyone else here is listening in, but my hypothesis is something changed during COVID because we had grown steadily until COVID. Changed during COVID, because we had grown steadily until COVID and I think something happened when everyone went home, because many of the people that I look up to and respect that do single event injury practice. It became harder and harder for them to get cases and seemingly more and more of the advertisers were getting a higher percentage of cases. I don't know if that's actually true, I don't know how I would find the numbers on it, but because over the last four years, even though we had grown before that, there's been even more growth. But eventually we have to make the decision, because what's happening here is probably happening everywhere in the country, which is we have more regional and some national players coming into our market.
Speaker 2:Ten years ago that wasn't the case. It was basically Arizona firms. Every once in a while someone else would try to come in and they'd go running away, and that was fine. The game is changing right, and so I don't think it's good for the consumer, to be honest with you. I'm not sure that it's good for trial lawyers, but we don't get to control that. That's just the reality of what we're all facing, and so I think that what we get to do is we're still growing, but we have to make a decision, which we've now made as a firm, and come up with our plan for that, which is there's only so much you can grow within the state of Arizona, and the reality is, with others coming in, we think we have something that we think we can replicate.
Speaker 3:I wasn't going to go there now, but you did talk to me out in the hall and so now we're there. So I I asked mark, I said what's your? I'm 66, I think about like exit plan. So I asked him what's his exit plan and he answered with an acquisition plan. So, and you just said you're getting ready to open in New Mexico. But you have your on your vision board. I guess, if not more concrete, you have this vision of acquiring practices in other regions, if not across the country. Talk to us a little bit. And I do want to get back to the beginning Yellow Pages, Alexis, sending you to this conference to a guy you've never heard of, and we'll get back there. But talk about this vision.
Speaker 2:So one of my idiot kids came to me and he's like Dad, oh, come on.
Speaker 3:I've been watching your Wait a minute, I get his newsletter. For 20 years I've watched your family. We don't put the bad stuff in there, okay. We don't put the bad stuff in there, oh okay.
Speaker 2:So he's really into business, he's a young go-getter and he said he went to this conference and he said someone said that we're about to experience the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of this country because you have all these baby boomers who have built these incredible businesses but no one's there to buy them. And he started talking about all these ideas he had. And so I, in my great wisdom, said to him I said Tate, I'm like, instead of trying to figure out little businesses to get into, you should learn one vertical so well that you will know immediately the opportunities as you get into it. And that seemed to be rational advice to me, but I missed the obvious, which he then came back to me about a week. He goes dad, don't you know one vertical well? And I was like you know, I don't know, but your mom does. And so so we? I gave that thought and I do think I know I have a lot of friends who are at the point where many of them I've met through great legal marketing and they've been talking for years about trying to get out, but no one in their firm is ready to buy or they're not in a position to buy and they don't want to. As one of my friends from this group, I'm still in touch with him. He has said to me I don't know how many times in the last 10, 10 years I don't want to die at my desk, but he doesn't know what to do with it because there's no one in the firm who can buy it.
Speaker 2:And and if you build any company the way you want to build it, right, where it's not relying on me or you, we all want to build it so that more and more we surround ourselves with a team that's trained and thinks and has the right mindset. We're built on the same values we're all working towards right, and if you think you've done that, what an opportunity to find somebody who's at whatever age they're at right I mean they're probably late 60s or 70s, but whatever they hit a point where they're like I've built something, and it's not just me, I have a team here, but the team's like how long till he or she is going to retire? So the team's worried and that doesn't help when you're trying to build more of the business and the person may not want to totally get out and it's people like us in this room or people probably listening on the podcast. We have it. I mean we're in a position to partner with those, with lawyers in that position and go. I mean they have to line up with you, right? So for us?
Speaker 2:I know everyone talks about culture. I think a lot of people talk about culture because they think it sounds good. I've talked to many people who swear culture, culture, culture and 10 minutes later they're ripping everyone they work with. But if you truly believe it, you got to have alignment there. But what an opportunity for all of us who are growing our businesses to maybe be win-win. The person doesn't have to totally leave, but they can continue to grow. But they don't have to be there every day. Their team still has a place to go to to grow it.
Speaker 2:So we now remember this is super. I just want to make this point. I haven't done this yet. So New Mexico we're growing from scratch. We have our marketing plan ready. It's going to launch very soon, but that's really just. It's next door to Arizona, of course, and it's a chance to grow the idea I'm talking about. We'll have to talk again in 18 months to see if I was full of it or not, but I really believe there is an opportunity to I'll use the term partner with people in that position and help them grow and help work for their teams, their team, everything they've built is still there and, if you have the right systems, to put it, and this is the conversation that was in Ed and John's room this morning, so if you weren't in that session, you will have access to these recordings.
Speaker 3:But they're talking exactly about this opportunity that we have, and one of the things you and I talked about out in the hall just a little while ago was like where would you see opportunity? Like what sort of besides you want to have this culture match for sure. But then there's certain parts of the firm where you're just, and have been forever, really, really good at, I think. So talk about that, like intake and sales, it's all about, you know, matching up strengths.
Speaker 2:So the culture has to be there right. If you're a place that's all about working really hard but not connecting personally, and you merge with a team that's all about going out for happy hour together, that's probably not going to work right. I mean there's got to be whatever, because I use those. I don't think one's better than the other, but there's got to be some alignment. But once you're in alignment on the values, as an example, I would love to find a firm that they are trial lawyers so they fit what we do. You don't have to be a firm of trial lawyers, but I think that's the only thing that would fit our model. But we think we're good at intake right, everyone thinks they're good at intake, but we have some reasons we think we don't suck at intake.
Speaker 2:I would love to find a firm that has great values trial lawyers but maybe their intake is just hey, paralegal, number three answer the call someone's on it because we think there might be an opportunity to help them and us at the same time, with our intake right. There may be a firm that's been built over a long period of time. They don't do much marketing. We don't know how our marketing will translate. We know when we moved from Phoenix to Tucson it translated well, but I think that's the same state. So it's not a, it's not a non-test, but it's not a real test. But I think there's some things we've learned in our marketing that might be a good fit. So if I can match the culture and the goals of whomever selling and what we're buying, I would love to find, because if I just find another team that has an amazing intake team, then there's no low hanging fruit.
Speaker 3:Right, right. So, ed, you can look for firms that might fit what Mark just described. All right Now, if you can go back in your mind to that time in your life when Alexis said I have just booked your flight to Virginia, probably to this great legal marketing conference, where were you firm-wise? Because I have a pretty good idea of what it was.
Speaker 2:I think there was about six or seven of us in the firm. Here was our lead-up to that. We grew up to about 13 people on full-time the equivalent of 13 people and it was a disaster. I mean it was. We went through a really, really tough time. I don't know how anyone else in small business handles their money, but we always had this thing where once we put money away, it was untouchable for the business and we had a time where employees were fighting with other employees. We had rumors.
Speaker 2:I realized back then, if you walk around the corner as a business owner and people stop talking, they're talking about something you don't want. Every time you come around the corner and they stop talking, they're talking about you. So which was odd to us because we had already had a great relationship with our team and we went through a two or three year period during growth Because at the time, at the time I remember I was like someone needs to run this business because my wife I know I'm married and I know I'm biased because it's my wife she is truly a gifted negotiator, so she negotiates and I'm not nearly that good as a trial lawyer, but I think I don't totally suck and I like trying cases. So I was busy litigating and she was busy doing her thing and we wanted someone else to handle the business. That is doable. I now know if you have clarity on what you expect, on how you're delegating that responsibility, how it's coming back to you. I mean, there's a lot you have to have in place if you're delegating that responsibility, how it's coming back to you. I mean, there's a lot you have to have in place if you're going to give up that control, which I think you can if you choose to do it. But the right way, every wrong way to do it, is how we did it.
Speaker 2:So the money that had gone away that we thought we were never going to touch, we needed to survive. We had a day that we call Black Monday, which was the day we walked in and fired half our staff which is a huge blow and hired nobody. We didn't need to replace anybody because the team was. So I'll use the term we use now toxic, not in our firm, but like a word I probably wasn't using in 2006, but it was April 2006 and it was horrible. So when three years later 2006, but it was April 2006, and it was horrible. So when three years later we were stuck, it was the two of us. There were six people. Now the good news is it was no longer toxic. Some of the people on that six person team are still part of our team. Everything changed from there.
Speaker 2:But but when she wanted to send me to GLM, um, you know, I felt like we knew what we were doing. We just couldn't figure out. We were at the same revenue number. I think we were at the same revenue number for like four straight years, within like 20,000. Like that's almost impossible until you and now I would say it's not at all impossible. You know what is it. We'll get you here. What got you here Won't get you there. You know, if you keep doing what you're doing, you keep getting what you're getting.
Speaker 2:At the time I had no understanding as to why we were at the same revenue number. Every year. I was working harder and harder. We were doing so much. We were at the same revenue number because we were built for that revenue number. The revenue number was a perfect reflection of who we were at the time.
Speaker 2:We could have gotten lucky. We didn't. I mean, you could have the situation where, unfortunately, someone who's badly hurt, makes the fortunate decision to choose us. That could have happened and it would have changed our revenue, but instead it was the same kind of cases, because that's what we were built to attract. That was the team we had. And look, it's not a. I've said this about it many times and everyone's already here. I don't need to convince you. Maybe you guys have been here for a couple of days. You'll make your own decisions For us. What happened was this forced us into a room where it allowed me to be competitive. This is not exactly your question, but I was talking out in the hall after you were doing your thing in here.
Speaker 2:I look back at a lot of the firms that we started with. We, we immediately joined the mastermind, but you don't. It's not like it's necessary. That's what we did immediately. I was like all in. In fact, I remember calling Alexis, my wife, and I was afraid to tell her that I had totally cause. I felt like such a sucker Cause. I was like I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go, and now I want to totally join, and I want to join the mastermind. And my wife's going to make fun of me and because she is, you know I'm an easier, I'm more of a sucker, and she was like no, let's do it. So we did it, but when I look back at that room, it was not the firms that were the furthest along the furthest along today. It is not the firms that were the smartest lawyers in the room. The smartest, I mean, some were. But in the end it's one word, it's just implementation. Whoever implemented more won. And the thing about being in the room is because there's no lack of ideas.
Speaker 3:Nothing has changed in that regard. In fact, there are more ideas today than we had back then, because literally, we were talking about designing yellow page ads, right, uh, you know I, I remember if you were on tv back then, or not, we were not.
Speaker 3:Um, uh, let me just say that almost every member of glm who's been with me for a long time when you get to know them, just just so you know almost every person has a version of the Black Monday story where, living on the edge, living on the edge, living on the edge, something blows up, either run out of money or somebody steals money, or you know something bad happens. So just if you haven't had it, you probably will. If you have had it, that's just normal. Do you remember, like I remember my picture of you all was exactly as you described good trial lawyers, running yellow page ads and just trying to figure it out. Is that accurate? Were you in other media that you recall to?
Speaker 2:figure it, trying to figure it out, is that accurate? Were you in other media that you recall we had? I mean, there's a little. There was a little newspaper in our section of the city and we ran an ad there, but it was mostly yellow pages. No TV, radio or billboard. We had tried one run at TV. It was a disaster and and and. Just to double down on that, I just cannot express to you, in case I'm not being clear, how bad of a job I did and we did. I mean we had been in business 10 years and we were starting all over. In effect, I mean that's a blow when you think you've worked really, really hard and tried everything you could to do things the right way and then you're looking around and you're watching people who you think are maybe not doing it the right way and they seem to be doing amazing things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you just, um, you know, there weren't many places you don't know what you don't know and there weren't many places back then that you could go For the type of discussions that we have here and and, frankly, many groups have around the country. I recall many years ago, you tell me, because at one point we took, we had a mastermind meeting that we brought out here to your place and you had us into your house and you showed us your office and, if you recall, you had just moved. I think you had like two offices in one building complex but, if I'm right, like separated. You had to walk outside to get between the two. And one of the things you told me was that you thought things made a significant change when you made a decision to spend one day a week disconnected from the legal work and working on the legal business. Is my memory correct?
Speaker 2:first of all, your, me, I your memory is absolutely right blocking time, so this is going to sound super elementary. By the way, I want to be clear. Every time I do this, it is one of the best things I do for my business, so then I stop doing it. Every time I do this, it is one of the best things I do for my business, so then I stopped doing it, and then I do it again.
Speaker 3:Another trait of Mastermind members, by the way. Yeah, that was a good idea and it was really good and we stopped.
Speaker 2:I can just say this, and I wish I could remember his name he's a big name on the internet and he calls it managers and makers, but I'm going to use a different term. It's totally his idea and if I remember it, I'll share it. So I'm not trying to steal someone else's idea. But basically, at any point in our life, in our work life, we're either creators or communicators. And when you're a communicator, right, every minute is about talking to people, sharing with people, meeting, meeting, meeting. Hey, checking in here, checking, let me talk to this client. I got this client, I got to talk to that team member.
Speaker 2:Communication isn't just a hassle. When our job is to lead and communicate, that's what we're doing, that's what we get paid to do. And so when you're a communicator, either naturally, or you're in that role, your job is to stay busy and stay connected and talk to people. When you're creating the vision for the growth of your team, who you want to hire if you're still I still try cases If you're working up cases, getting ready for trial, whatever it is, you're a creator. And if someone knocks on your door and goes, do you have a minute? They didn't just take your minute, they just took your morning. I'll just speak for me. For me, and maybe it's just my own dysfunction, but I need uninterrupted space when I'm thinking of big picture things and work which you gave me, a book which I didn't read, but it looked good, deep work.
Speaker 3:You gave me the book Traction, I think.
Speaker 2:Which has worked for you. Yes, so there we go I don't think we do.
Speaker 3:The Maths Mind is a great book exchange place, which it is.
Speaker 2:I did read Traction, but the idea of deep work, I think I didn't read it, but you know if you read the back cover, um, but it is true that you need to create the space and the problem is you're. There's never time to create that space, because this is not revolutionary, but the urgent takes precedence over the important. The knock on your door do you have five minutes? How do you say no? And when I blocked my time, which was not, it was actually Dave Freeze's idea.
Speaker 3:Someone else, ben, introduced me to and he was like I have a book, no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs Kennedy and Glass.
Speaker 2:Same idea.
Speaker 3:Fourth edition just issued. I'm going to send you a case.
Speaker 2:That's, I will, it's, but I will just say this and you can call me and yell at me. If you were all nearby I would say I'll buy you lunch if I'm wrong. But you're not all nearby. But I'm telling you, if you block your time, take one day a week, and it can't be a Friday, because if you block Friday it just becomes a three-day weekend. I think that's the temptation. If you block one day a week and on that day of a week you do not take calls, you do not check email, you just work on your vision, your purpose, your values, your, if you have big projects at work. And and what I found, have found more helpful is when I keep a list of what I've done to hold myself accountable. But and but, let me make a promise when you do this, an absolute promise People will not understand hey, I just need five minutes. No, just this one day. You're the only one who can do it. You have to guard that time.
Speaker 2:But if you do it, I honestly think it has such. It is the biggest lever, because then it forces you to do the things you want to do anyway, which is work on the big picture. That changes your life, including changes the life of the people who you work with. Who think they need to interrupt you, and why? Just to bring it full circle, it's because they're communicators. Many people don't live in the entrepreneurial space there's nothing wrong with it but they've never experienced the. I need to think where we're going to be in a year. I need to think about whether my management team is set up. That's not what they're good at, it's not their skillset and they don't understand it if you say it. So they're not being rude, they just don't get it and you will have to fight for that time. But I'm sorry for the very long answer to the simple question.
Speaker 3:It's really cool, but I have three topics that I want to get to. So one of the things that you became famous for in fact you are in a Dan Kennedy book. Since you don't read books, I'm not sure that you actually know this, but at least in one of the prior versions of no BS Grassroots Marketing he talks about you and Alexis and my recollection is one of the things as you were growing the money, you still didn't have a ton of money, right. You became very good at community marketing and community events and you started, as I recall and you can tell me I'm wrong even events as simple as let's all go to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and come on in and get your picture taken with Mark right. Talk about that, like.
Speaker 3:Talk about these early inroads. As you came to Great Lugar Marketing and you got ideas from other people in the room and you said it's implement the win goes to the guy or gal who implements, right. So what were some of the early things? You went back and said we can do this. Like, we don't have a ton of money, but we can do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, First. No, they wanted the free Chinese. I don't think the picture of me was that valuable, but so we've had and I'll give you the answer to this first part Movies, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll give you the answer to the first part, but then I'm going to tell you what our tracking has found in this. We got a lot of success by renting out. That actually was. The first one was all you can eat Chinese restaurant. That was actually I know you all don't believe me now, but it was actually a really good all you can eat Chinese food buffet and so they went out of business. I don't know, but anyway. So. But then we'd rent out like, like, if you know the area at all, scottsdale's got a lot of nice places in Old Town Scott, so we started renting out a well-known pizza place there. We would take over a restaurant. We would invite people and we would take over movie theaters. Invite people in.
Speaker 2:Now, when you're there, I'll just say this anyone who shows up, so we would send it to our whole list. You know, former client, you I'm sure many of you here collect a list of anyone who ever contacts you. They try to hire. You keep a list of everyone's name. You may be concerned, as we were. Who's going to show up, and is it going to be people? I want to show up? You know who shows up, the people who you'd want to show up. Why? Because free pizza or free buffet or a free movie. It's the people who'd actually you'd want to see again, who'd want to connect with you, or people in the community that are just fans of your brand. You know, if you use a newsletter, they love the newsletter.
Speaker 2:Back then we weren't at when we started this, we weren't advertising. We got a lot of I mean probably everyone in the room. No matter what kind of law you do, your best cases have come from word of mouth. That is probably true. We do all this ridiculous advertising. A disproportionate percentage of the most horrible stuff you wish would never happen to anybody, but because of that it's a larger case still comes through word of mouth. How do you connect that Someone shows up to at some Italian restaurant, you have the food there and you hang around for three hours and I will say, at least for me, it is super energizing Because everywhere you go Because they're walking around with the cameras going.
Speaker 3:can I get a picture taken with you, Right?
Speaker 2:Well now there's so much advertising, but everyone who's there, they're happy to see you, you're happy to see them. The only thing I will tweak about it is so first of all say this that has wait. I don't know the exact ROI, and that over the years, because at the time we didn't track our ROI, which I can talk about how we track it, because at the time I couldn't figure out how do you track an ROI when you don't know the value of a case when it comes in and there's no real lifetime value of a customer. There is, but there's, you know. Fortunately most people don't get hurt again. So but in any event, now we track ROI and here's what I'll say about ROI.
Speaker 2:The big events have a positive ROI. So like once a year we do a huge, we take over, we have a bunch of bouncy houses, food trucks we pay for and we get a bunch of people in the community. That stuff has a positive ROI, just on referrals alone. That doesn't count. The reviews we get while we're there and stuff like that. That probably helps drive more.
Speaker 2:But our better ROI has been small dinners, inviting six or eight people to things and hanging out with them, which seems like it wouldn't be as good because you don't get to connect with as many people.
Speaker 2:They're both good, both a positive ROI. Neither is very expensive and you know, obviously we track how many people have given us referrals and so when we have extra tickets to give away, you know, or we're doing this stuff, we look at how many referrals we've gotten and the people who send us the most referrals get on those lists, because we know these are people who are active on social media or active in their churches or active in their community. We already know they're going to give out our name and kind of leaning into those people who already love our brand and they say they love our brand by giving out our name. If they go out to dinner with you and they like you and know you right, but you go out to dinner with them once and spend time and have some fun with them, I would say you've supercharged that relationship and these are people who already love you.
Speaker 3:This is what I remember is that you know you started and you just did things that didn't cost a lot of money and got so much value out of it. The second thing that I remember that you became very famous within the group for this was your insane and I mean that in a good way training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, insane is often good thanks.
Speaker 3:Training and onboarding of your, of your team that was going to be answering the phone. My recollection you can, you you're, you're hired, but we don't let you touch anything for I don't know, three weeks or four weeks maybe, um, and and and. Today it must be a huge thing. But I remember visiting your office when we brought the mask and you actually had, for the first time I had ever seen, this was a dedicated room of your inbound sales and intake team. Talk a little bit about, maybe today even, mark, how do you, because it's so critical but how do you find and then train up to your standards, your brand, your culture, the folks who are the first responders when the call comes in?
Speaker 2:So first let me be open, that we now have an intake manager who knows more about intake than I do, so I can give you the kind of big picture stuff on what we believe. But I'm not going to pretend to know everything, but here's what I know. Number one let me start with this premise All of us are hemorrhaging money on our phones, all of us. Even if you do great, you know Hennessy does a great, they do that survey every year. And how quickly did you respond? You're still losing money on your phones or on your chat or on everything else, because it's not just how quickly you answer, it's what do they say. I'll give you an example Someone calls up and the phone rings and the person on your team and they go can you tell me where you're located?
Speaker 2:If your person, in our opinion, answers the question of where you're located, you just lost money. The person who called you wanted to know where you're located. They're a potential new client. Why did they ask you where you're located? They think that's the most important question. They don't realize that finding the lawyer closest to them is not what's most important. If they call and they say to your person on your phone how much do you charge and the person on the phone tells them how much you charge. You just lost a potential and forget the case you lost. You just sent someone who lost the opportunity to work with your firm that does things the right way and they're going to end up with someone either closer or cheaper that charges less. Who's going to put them in a worse position?
Speaker 2:Because did we train our team on how to handle those kinds of questions and what do we do to make sure that? I won't give you the whole backstory on it? But anyway, so we do a ton of training. The only thing we've switched is we now give them a call, I think early in their second week, because they we found that their anxiety level, someone's anxiety level built up too much when they had been training, training, training. They hadn't taken a live call and now the technology is much better. So the manager, or in this case the trainer, can jump in if they need to. Maybe it was always there, but we didn't have the money for a phone system like that now. But now any of us can afford this technology it's, you know, with voice over IP now probably every phone in here has the ability or for a very cheap addition to be able to jump into a call if you need to.
Speaker 2:But you know how many cases have been lost because somebody you know said oh, I was just. You know, I was hurt. My sister was a passenger and I'm visiting her in the hospital and your intake person didn't know to say well, I don't know if I can help you because you got you know you got a ticket for running the red light. Tell me about your sister, the training that goes into it. If you don't get the case, nothing else matters. Right, and so I would. I would say and I know there's a lot of companies now that will train on it but I think all of us push it off on or no. It's easy to push it off on a paralegal or the least the lowest paid person in your firm when it's the only time in the whole. If your marketing is bad, you have time to fix it. If you make a mistake on legal, you have time to apologize. If you don't capture that lead when it comes in, you will never get a second chance and you will never know it.
Speaker 3:So you have said that for 20 years, I, I it it.
Speaker 2:It has had a huge impact on our whatever success we've had.
Speaker 3:A huge piece of it was realizing that you've had a great deal of success, and it goes to a point I made yesterday. It said the reason we do all this is to make sure that that client who deserves you, no matter what your practice area, doesn't wander aimlessly into somebody else's law office because you failed in your moral obligation to get your marketing out, to tell the world about what it is that you're really good at, that you are the best at, so that they can find you. And I know we've talked about that for a long time. Let me ask you this From six or eight people when we first met to 160, I'm interested in a couple of the, some of the, and we only have 10 or 11 minutes and maybe hours but the challenges as you move through the level of your growth, the things that you and Alexis found hardest as leaders of the firm, like what were some of the hardest things to try to figure out as you moved into areas where you had no experience and you had never been there before.
Speaker 2:I think our businesses are a reflection of us. The things that made me want to bang my head against the wall at times this week are a reflection of me, and for our businesses to grow, we have to grow, and so if I was going to simplify it, I would say what I thought I wanted in a leader meaning someone other than us as owners. What I thought I wanted, I wasn't thinking big enough. That's not really what we. What we needed was someone who could come in and go.
Speaker 2:You think you know how to handle intake. You're making mistakes here, here, here and here. Let me give you other ideas. Right, someone who could take it and run with it Won't stop me from having an opinion, but but, but to do those things and repeatedly, when we find ourselves at cause, I do think things go kind of in levels in business. I think you know the story I told about being capped at the same revenue number, which is probably the same number many people here were capped at for a long time and it's going well. But why can't I get past this? But then you grow to the next level and then you're hitting your head again and it's. It's ultimately about growing yourself enough to grow your leadership team and when you know, when you step back, to have the vision and then you put, bring people up, either homegrown, which is amazing, or brought in from the outside, which is sometimes necessary. Now you have the ability, I think, to be way more, and I think that's something that I, when I first met you, I would not have known.
Speaker 3:It's so interesting because, as I said, we don't prep this at all and this is exactly what we talked about yesterday. It's like the person that needs to change the most as you go through the levels is you, and that's hard. I'm curious besides our group, what are some other influences on your own life as you have grown personally, whether it's people, organizations. Maybe you don't read books, I don't know. Maybe you listen to Audible Mark. You're the same guy I met 20 years ago, but you're much different guy I met 20 years ago would have been some of the big influences not don't say greatly remarking, but what?
Speaker 2:else a great legal marketing started. Ben introduced us once to a group it's it's called a leader elite for entrepreneurs, when, if you hit so, I was, it's called Elite or Elite for Entrepreneurs. So I was actively involved in the mastermind for probably 15 years, a long time. They do different things, but it's peanut butter and jelly right. Sometimes there's great combinations. That's had a huge influence on us.
Speaker 3:Well, elite was mixed breed. It wasn't just lawyers, it was other business.
Speaker 2:It's mostly not lawyers. I think we might be the only the only lawyers in the community at the moment.
Speaker 3:Originally through infusion soft, now keep and now keep. That's right.
Speaker 2:So it. It is just where great legal marketing. There's something about being in the room. For me and I know we're all here For me, being in the room with other people that are dealing with a lot of similar things has a real value, and it's hard to replace that value. On the other hand, it's nice to be sitting in the room and to your right is someone who's running a machine building business and on your left is someone who's running a SaaS business, and you realize how much overlap there is, and so we're talking about different things. Both things are vital.
Speaker 2:They both had a huge role, and the truth is I mean I've said this many times those two masterminds have had the biggest impact, and when I say our life, I don't mean our life necessarily. The kids have played a role. But you know, if you change your business, you change your life right, because when you're sitting there worried and overwhelmed and you can't figure out how to handle something, and you know, if you're my wife, you can't sleep, and if you're me, you can't go to sleep because your wife wants to talk to you about business and whatever it is. The ability to to feel like you have it under control, at least to me, change your life. So being in a room with other people going through it has, for me, been had. I mean, really, though those two masterminds are are so far and away. I mean, I'm not sure those are just the two biggest things that at least come to mind in terms of what's what, what happened since 2009 or whatever it was till now. Those two things have had the biggest impact on those changes.
Speaker 3:Let me. In a second we'll take some questions. So, Sherry, if you want to get those microphones ready, Let me ask you this so many of the firms in the room the spouse or life partner is close, either working inside the firm or, of course, it's the dinnertime conversation. Tell us a little bit about you and Alexis and maybe how you have made business decisions and vision decisions together.
Speaker 2:So, first of all, I say this a lot and people think I'm joking and I'm joking, but not really for me. It's awesome, I drive her nuts, so. So we got to balance that out. But if you're the person who just wants to be the visionary and you have someone who'll do all the work, I get to be the visionary. Having her around is the best. So how have we done it? It's mostly good for us.
Speaker 2:Our way of doing it is it was easier at the beginning because at the beginning I was the litigator, she was the negotiator and did the pre-lit stuff and what I liked doing and what she liked doing were not the same and there was a clear line. Now we always talked about everything. We'd listen into each other's calls. People may be surprised, but if I'd get off a call and she'd go, you shouldn't have said A, B and C, Okay. And then, if she got off the call, I would tell her much more carefully what I thought she should or shouldn't do.
Speaker 2:But that was great and even though there's the asterisk of, even though I mentioned it, I do wish at midnight I could stop talking about whatever's going on at the office. But for us it's been good. Now it has gotten as we've grown, nothing really changes right. Business is business, Small business is small business. No matter what the industry, what the size, I really think small business people you know I don't know about. I've fallen in love with small business. That's not where I was when we first met.
Speaker 3:I love talking to the restaurant owner. You were the guy that swore to me that you would never be the one that didn't take all the depositions and try all the cases.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's right, and that was you wanted. That was hard to give up. That was really hard to let someone else try the case or trust someone else to handle a big case, even though it's not like I ever thought I was. You know, jerry Spence walking in the room, I didn't think that, but when it was time to help the client, you know, deep down it was hard to not be like. You know I don't trust anyone else to do it and so, but for anyone working and I know every relationship's different, but for us it's been awesome. Now I know a lot of people that have had successful, successful situations like that, where they're like work is work, home is home. That is not us. Our kids have listened to us talk about what's going on at work our whole life remind us how many children seven, eight, eight all this with eight.
Speaker 2:My wife is very irresponsible and um so. So they are still awake. But that was. That was not us like. We have been fine with the fact that we talk about what's going on at work and we talk about what's going on in cases, and if a ruling comes in, when we were smaller we were talking about it, and if we're looking for a leader now we're talking about it. But I do think that from talking to people where it hasn't worked, it's the failure to set the thing. But I will say one other quick thing for anyone who's doing that. When I look back at the law firms that grew the most and I said who implements the most, it was very often someone who had a right-hand person. A lot of times that was a significant other. Sometimes it was a right-hand person because that would free up one of them to be doing the visionary stuff that moved the needle.
Speaker 3:If you remember the Hofheimers right, they had a non-lawyer firm administrator, Rob, who just made everything in the firm happen.
Speaker 2:It's magic when someone can have the bandwidth to do the big stuff.
Speaker 3:Okay, we have time for questions. I've got a bunch more myself, but Len has a question. And, len, there's a boxed mic coming towards you that you're going to touch. So do you know, len, you know.
Speaker 2:Len right. Yes, that's why I feel like I'm being set up right now.
Speaker 3:Could be, could be.
Speaker 4:First I want to say I heard you speak at Lex and it was the best presentation that I heard there. It was excellent. Can everybody hear? I have a ton of questions for you about that later.
Speaker 4:Anyway, the question I have for you today is can you take us through the evolution of establishing your intake team, because when you, when I first met you at glm, you were not at the level you are now and I'm growing. You know a successful intake team, but I don't know how to train them and I've had I've had people come in from the outside to train them. What have you done and do you continue to use external trainers and how does that work?
Speaker 2:So we never use external trainers, but I'm not advising that. I think right now there are so many there. There are resources, don't require. But I'll answer your question directly.
Speaker 2:The first thing we did and I won't tell you the story behind it because we're short on time is whoever's on the phones is on the phones, that is their job. They have no other job because anyone with another job is a doer. And then the phones are an interruption. The phone is the most important call. It's going to happen all day. So the first thing we did is carve out if you're on the phones, you're on the phones. If the phone's dead, you can have a secondary job that requires no phone work. The second thing we did, we started recording every call and we started listening to the calls. Since then, we now QA the calls, so we send out surveys to every potential new client. If it comes back neutral or negative, we have someone go through it and we have a quality assurance score. Were you doing the things you're supposed to do? How was the tone? And we do I can't remember one or two a week randomly, for every agent has it done. We have training and again, I'm sorry for not being specific, but I actually don't know specifically, but I think it's once a week. They do training. Now the problem with training people on the phones is they have to be ready on the phone. So you know you got to find a way to back them up when you do it.
Speaker 2:We've created a safety net because you know how this works if you've ever worked in retail, as I have. Everyone shows up at once well, the same thing on our phones, right? So no one calls for two hours. Six calls come at the same moment. Who's the safety net? Because if it rolls to the answering service or to voicemail, they're on to someone. And again, I'm just gonna double, for at least most of people I've met in this community over the years are people who actually care about their clients. That's not everyone, but the vast majority of people who showed up that I met here over the years were people who actually cared. So if you don't get on that call, there's a good chance instead of finding another you, which there are others of us they're going to find a much worse result. And then we have scripts. We just switched after years of needles to lead docket about a year and a half, a little over a year ago. That's helped because now we can march through it and have a score of what we do, so I've probably skipped some steps.
Speaker 4:No, I appreciate that. Thank you Thanks.
Speaker 3:Len, anybody. Who else? I don't see a hand, so let me just ask you this real quick Give us some idea. Easy when you have 13 and you fire half of them. It's easier to manage when you have 160. Give us some idea of the structure, of how you manage or run who's reporting to who, and and how do you spend your time so my, even though that says zero, like I, like a lot.
Speaker 2:So if you're growing a leader and this I wish I could go back in time it's got nothing to do with I don't. I don't know this. I don't know when you get you know these huge companies or these midsize companies with thousands of people. I have no idea what they're like, but I believe, at least up to this point, what I'm doing now is what I wish I would have done when I started growing, which is everyone on the team has what we call a big three KPIs One, two or three KPIs, no more than three.
Speaker 2:This is the deal I made with you, so there is a check-in for everyone on the team every week, with whomever they report to. Everybody has a check-in. My Tuesdays are the days I deal with. We have five departments on our team across what we do. Four meet with me, one meets with my wife. The first part of every check-in is catch up. You got to build relationships. But after that is what are your big three? Where are they? Where should they be? How can I help? It's the same thing for everybody every time. That is the. These are the things that matter Now, if you hit your big three, are you getting a raise?
Speaker 2:Are you getting promoted. No, that is the deal we made. I'm paying you to do this. I was talking out there about there's a really really old short business article the folly of hoping for A while rewarding for B. We're all paying people by the hour. Is that what we want? That's not what we want. I don't want to pay you for time. Your time has no value to my clients or to the rest of the team.
Speaker 2:I want you to produce certain things that matter, coming up with objective KPIs that they are held to as the bare minimum. And then, when they're not performing, it is much easier to say you're not succeeding. But when it just goes by gut, it is so hard to let someone who is not succeeding go because, well, you think I'm not doing good, but I think I am working hard. None of that matters. Here's your KPIs. If you're not at this level, then you can't be in this position. Now we're big on coach up before coach out. How can I pour into you? What training do you need? How can I help you? We're not here to lose people. I want you to love it here and succeed here. But if you can't get to these big three again the KPIs then you're not here. So everyone on the team has it. So everyone on the team has a weekly meeting.
Speaker 2:We do a lot of offsite training now. It doesn't have to be offsite, but there's some value to getting away from your business and doing some training. So we're doing more and more training. We have lawyer offsites and paralegal offsites. We're trying to do things. I don't know how many people here are people who work from home, or is that just me? All right, so a decent number. So getting people even some people we have out of state to come in a couple of times a year and get the team together working in the same place, which requires us to rent space. I'm not saying you have to do it. So let me wrap it up In terms of what I do.
Speaker 2:I try to block out time to work on my big stuff. My Tuesdays are spent communicating and making sure my leaders are doing what I want my leaders to do and finding out what else has to happen. There's a couple other meetings throughout the week and if I could go back in time, I would say I should immediately carve out block time to work on projects and I should immediately start building my bench. What are the things I least want to do, because whatever you hate doing, somebody loves it. I hate details, I suck at details. There are people who thrive. They thrive in the details. That's right where they want to be. Find them, build them, create objective measures for them and, if you can try to build two or three at once so you don't have to train it all at the same time, build out the training Anyway, that's how we do it.
Speaker 3:Has this been awesome. Can you thank Mark for coming by.
