The Art of Preventing Stupid with Matthew Davis

I was instantly sold on talking to attorney Matthew Davis when he told me about his heavy metal band, Geriatric Steel. This conversation does not disappoint! We covered everything from how to weed out "energy vampires" to why you gotta walk in your employees' shoes if you really want to lead. Plus we get into hiring horror stories, fixing foundational business problems, and why you gotta believe in your people's dreams before anything else. 

Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:

• I almost spat coffee when Matthew talked about "mushroom treatment" practices: when attorneys feed people sh*t and keep them in the dark. Check out his philosophy on how we all can do better... 
  
  
• Hiring horror story: Matthew shares a harrowing tale of someone who not only couldn't deliver on what they were hired for, but also stole. Here's how it went down (and what you can learn to make your hiring smoother)... 
  
  
• Matthew reveals his "three circles" technique for spotting nightmare clients (and savings yourself a whole lotta heartache)...
  
  
• I can't sell what I don't believe: I get raw about what made me finally leave my toxic corporate job and go all in on my own business...
  
  
• There's only ONE situation where it's acceptable to lie to your boss or client. Do you know what it is?

I was vibing the whole time, and I think you're gonna love Matt as much as I do. Listen now!

Matthew's bio:

Matthew Neill Davis is an attorney and entrepreneur that led his solely owned firm, Davis Business Law, through over 1000% percent growth over six years, making it one of very rare law firms ever to make the Inc 5000 list. The firm currently has eight offices from Austin to Kansas City. Martindale Hubble recognized Davis with its prestigious AV rating as one of the Preeminent Attorneys in America for demonstrating the highest levels of skill and integrity. 
 
With over twenty-five years of experience helping businesses leaders with their legal and entrepreneurial matters, Davis now teaches them how to deal with their vulnerabilities so they can capitalize on their opportunities through his firm’s proprietary Strong Protected Business System™️. He has presented his programs to prestigious business groups, such as the Inc 5000 Master’s Class and the Young Presidents’ Organization Global Forum. He also regularly appears on podcasts and in the media. 
 
Inc Magazine published his first book “The Art of Preventing Stupid,” in 2019 and the follow up, “The Strong Protected Business” is slated for publication in 2023. He also shares his extensive knowledge as host through his podcasts “The Strong Protected Business” and “The Art of Preventing Stupid. 
 
Davis is a graduate of Cornell College, the University of Oklahoma and Cornell University. Davis has extensive litigation and business representation experience. He has served as lead or co-counsel in litigation cases with recoveries in excess of $50 million dollars. He is a member of the Tex

Transcript

Angie Colee: 0:03

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. What meet today is my new friend, matt Davis. Hi, matt.

Matt Davis: 0:38

Oh, I like this permission. This will be fun.

Angie Colee: 0:42

Permission to get fascinated by things, to have a wonderful. I mean, we were talking right before we hit record about maps, about travel, about all kinds of good things. I was just gonna get stuck in talking about road trips and going to Buckeys and just forget to record entirely.

Matt Davis: 0:56

Yeah, I get that. I like my road trips too. I just got back from one, so that was kind of fun.

Angie Colee: 1:04

Yeah, well, if we have some time at the end we'll have to circle back and talk about road trip tips, because I'm a full-time digital nomad, usually traveling to different places, and I've had people kind of oh my God, how do you do 10 hours in the car? I do 10 hours in the car with a cat.

Matt Davis: 1:20

Well, you and I are from the South Plains. 10 hours is nothing, it just goes.

Angie Colee: 1:26

Can I find some good music or some good podcasts and have your usual places that you like to stop off and just make it a tradition? It's fun, it's fun. But anyway, tell us a little bit about your business.

Matt Davis: 1:39

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a law firm. We call it Davis Business Law and the easiest way to describe it is we are the family doctors of small business law. So we've got 15 attorneys spread out from Kansas City down to Austin. We're growing so we'll probably add a couple new markets next year and we take care of small businesses kind of soup to nuts. We'll handle claims or litigation, we do the paperwork, but if it gets super heavy we'll call in the brain surgeons. So last year we were in the middle of selling off an asset of a company for well into nine figures, so over 100 million bucks and we call them Vincent and Alken was on that which are what we call TBLs tall building lawyers. We can do the work, but we're like look you guys, this is more your specialty. You're the brain surgeon in this.

Angie Colee: 2:41

Oh, that's a fascinating approach to that. I'd never heard it described that way too, just kind of like general practitioner versus specialist. That's pretty cool.

Matt Davis: 2:50

Well, there's not a lot of law firms that really get down in that grit with us, but we love representing small businesses. We just got a great Yelp review today that was maybe spoke to that issue and it said finally, a law firm that gets small business. And I'm like, yeah, that's us, thank you, that's gratifying.

Angie Colee: 3:12

Oh, I love it when people get it.

Matt Davis: 3:14

Yeah, I didn't know we got Yelp reviews but I was like, oh, I get the Google review, I get the Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever, but Yelp, I guess.

Angie Colee: 3:24

Yeah other people can create a profile for you. That happened to me when I first started my copywriting career. Some well-meaning friends set up a profile for me on Yelp. I said my business is not one that usually sources Yelp as a lead source, right? People aren't finding me through Yelp to hire me. And then I said something, as I'm going to doing, probably mouthed off to someone in a random internet form about marketing, and they decided to troll me for it by constantly attacking my Yelp profile and giving me one star reviews about my SEO services, a service which I did not in fact offer.

Matt Davis: 4:04

So it was interesting I disabled it after that.

Matt Davis: 4:08

Now that you think about it, now that you mention this, there was a bar in our town that was run by a particularly hateful guy and he was just kind of an odious, bigoted fellow right. Somehow the gay community went out and created a Yelp website for him and started marketing him as a gay bar. And it was so funny because they were so crass in talking about this guy walking around and fishing at stockings and all this and that. So, yeah, it can happen. I'm a little negligent here in not being aware of that branch. Lord knows what they're saying about me on Yelp, right.

Angie Colee: 4:57

It's probably better to not pay attention to those things or at least have. I know that that's my goal as I release my book and as I grow. The podcast is just to have somebody on my team that looks through all of those things and filters out the negative things and only surfaces the positive things, like, feel free to share something that is like constructive criticism with me, but I have no need to hear the you suck, I hate you, swear less any of that stuff. No, I don't care.

Matt Davis: 5:22

Yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it.

Angie Colee: 5:25

I like it. It's a people who like sit there and watch commercials and like, would you just shriek spam at the TV or change the channel? Just change the channel. If you don't like it, I'm saying so. Tell me, leigh. Abrupt segue tell me a little bit about how you got started down this path of small business law.

Matt Davis: 5:42

Well, I moved. I thought I was going to be a Washington lawyer and was prepared for it, was in interviews, and then I just had an epiphany that I didn't want to do that and moved back to my hometown, which is, you know, a small city out here, and I just had to get my hands dirty and figure out how to make a living and figure out how to help people, and I eventually just wandered into doing a lot of work for small businesses. And then, about eight years ago, I was practicing out of my house. I had a very, very sophisticated marketing strategy. I didn't have a website, I didn't have my name in the phone book. If you want to define me, you had to have my number or get it from somebody.

Matt Davis: 6:32

I was busy full time, but that got a little oppressive. And so I had a midlife crisis and started a law firm and we just decided, for marketing purposes, we're going to get rid of. You know, we had a general practice and we got rid of family law. We were doing a little criminal law got rid of that. I mean, we jettisoned about ultimately well over half a million dollars a year in business and just pared it down to business law and started growing it. So we started here in my hometown of Enid and we don't do I mean we have a couple clients here, but we've got. You know we went to Oklahoma City first and started growing it and built some marketing muscle and some repeat business muscle and then we just took the show on the road.

Angie Colee: 7:32

Oh, that's awesome, you know. And random question here do you have, have you seen, any kinds of patterns with the kinds of small businesses that you work with? Is it kind of an industry or a vertical, or is it more like size and revenue or anybody that comes to you that you like working with?

Matt Davis: 7:50

We do. We have some pretty big businesses anymore that we work with. A lot of people that we work with are immigrants, are people who are new to town, because, you know, one of the best ways people get referred or get to know an attorney is, oh, I grew up with him or I want to go to church with him, and you know we get some of that. But we're going to be better digital marketers than our competition and sometimes, once you get into a community, you just become the go-to attorney. So, for instance, jeff, who's you know, a tall gringo, is now the attorney for all the Nepalese in Oklahoma City. We don't know why, but they love it.

Matt Davis: 8:41

I mean, we know why they love it, but we don't know how they came to it and you know, years ago I broke into the Lebanese families up in Wichita and so you know that's how I know I'm not a complete SOB, because when I go to Wichita I usually come home with homemade hummus that was made by a Lebanese grandma, with mint leaves on it and all shebang.

Angie Colee: 9:07

Sounds delicious. You're making me hungry.

Matt Davis: 9:09

Yeah, it's great and you know we go out and we build relationships. But and digital is a good spot to break in but you know it's breaking in because we know that every client that comes to us is a doubter. Okay, but guess what? People hate attorneys. You know, I know that and I know why. Because you know I went to school with them.

Matt Davis: 9:37

I didn't like them back then and I've been dealing with them for 30 years, you know, in the law business, and they annoy me. I mean I was ready to kill this guy in Omaha the other day. So you know, I get that. You know what people hate about lawyers and we just do a lot better job taking care of our clients and respecting their dollar and taking care of their needs for information. So and one of our taglines is smart business decisions and you know your attorneys can real quickly become a problem in your business. So maybe get in the drift that we're we look at how to help clients a lot differently than most law firms, let alone they don't specialize or know their role in. You know our first core value is believe and protect their dreams, right.

Angie Colee: 10:29

I love that.

Matt Davis: 10:31

That's what people are trying to do, that you know they're. They're build. They're trying to build a better life for themselves. So our job is to come alongside them. Let's help you out, let's protect you. If we got a problem, let's get back in the opportunity space as quick as we can. You know, let's not just sit here and admire your problem and talk about all the stupid motions. We need to go file. You know, let's go figure out, you know how, what our best solution to get you back on offense is.

Angie Colee: 11:00

I love the angle of that and I think a lot of what you said is is brilliant. I want to highlight and unpack that for everybody that's listening, the fact that you know that every client comes to you as a doubter, like I think there's a certain power in acknowledging the things that people say, the things that people see, instead of fighting against it, because I know I've worked with some people that are like that is just wrong, that's the wrong impression. I want to prove people wrong and and I don't know that telling them that their beliefs are wrong is the way to prove people wrong. And I want this to acknowledge that some people say that and that is not true for you and you're just going to show them.

Matt Davis: 11:37

Yeah, I mean, they come to us and they're apprehensive because of a well warranted concern about the law business. And you know, the two things I just did are a slide deck or my daughter's working on it right now for our retreat, and I constantly preaching this to the attorneys and I say, look, here's what scares people. Number one they're afraid of getting the mushroom treatment. Do you know what that is? That's getting fed BS and kept in the dark. Ooh, Okay, you know that's what people hate because, oh, my attorney doesn't communicate with me, I don't know what's going on and look, we don't always get it right, but that's a theme and that's a thread of us pushing through it and just doing everything we can to keep our clients informed so that they can make a smart business decision right.

Matt Davis: 12:39

So you know, we got to deal with the mushroom treatment because we don't do that. You know that's guys, no, no, no. Communicate, communicate. Get them the information they need when they need it, including what's coming down the pike. It ties to the second thing that people hate about the law of business, which is the blank check syndrome. They just hate this feeling of handing over a blank check.

Matt Davis: 13:04

You know, because then they're like you know. I was, by the way, I mean, I was furious at my accountant because he called me the other day and he's like oh well, you have a tax bill, and I'm like and it's due today. And I'm like why?

Matt Davis: 13:19

don't you call me to your office and I'm like, I'm going to call you two weeks ago and, by the way, you're wrong because, guess what? I understand the tax code. I used to teach income tax and okay, so let's go back to blank check. So you know what we do is we attorneys, our attorneys, communicate with case finance every week and case finance, you know, and and and or client services. They'll send it. You know. Here's your email. Here's what's coming down the pike. You know let's. You know we're going to. You're going to pre fund this because we're going to get your buy in. You know we want to know that. This is what you want us to do, because this is. You know you're going to pass now. You're going to pass later, but you're going to pass now and it's not us being jerks, it's like let's get your buy in, let's get. You know this is. I don't want to send you some surprise bill.

Angie Colee: 14:12

Yeah, I love that approach. I've worked with several people who I work mostly with creative service providers. But that's the project where it's hard to define, because you're usually creating something out of nothing a marketing campaign, a design, a logo, something like that. Those are the things that can scope creep easily. They can get a lot bigger than the initial project plan was. I've worked with so many people who, once the scope creep happens, they're just mentally saying, okay, well, I'll add it to the tab. They go no, no, no, no, no, no.

Angie Colee: 14:45

The moment that it became a change, the moment there was a change to the original project, it is your duty as the trusted expert to inform them that there's an additional cost for this. Here's what I can do. Here's how this will affect the timing. Let me know how you'd like to proceed, because about half the time you're going to get people that go, just send me an invoice, that's not a problem. About half the time you're going to get people to go, oh, oh, no, I didn't know it was going to cost me that much. I guess I really don't need it that badly, but give them the option to say that and either way, it's either going to stop you from doing unnecessary work that you ultimately won't get paid for. It's going to preserve that relationship because they're not going to feel like they're writing you a blank check. It's going to ensure that you get paid for extra work that you do and you don't feel resentful because you feel like you're giving them a whole bunch of stuff that they're not paying for. Like, speak up.

Matt Davis: 15:35

Preach it, speak up. I'll throw out one more option that can happen there, which is how about this? Sometimes they go when I hold on. Explain to me why. Again, explain to me why we need to do this, and that's just. And so you really got three options.

Matt Davis: 16:00

Yeah, go ahead to explain to me and then you're going to go either go ahead or stop, so stop. So the way we handle things allows our clients to tap the brakes or say stop, and it's super powerful and it leads to really enhanced client satisfaction because ultimately, at the end of the day, the art we create whatever we're doing, but in the law business for us is client satisfaction.

Angie Colee: 16:31

That's the art we're trying to create.

Angie Colee: 16:33

I like that. Whatever we're creating, it's all about the client satisfaction. I mean that's not to say that you're going to have 100% of clients satisfied 100% of the time. There's always factors beyond our control that impact the outcomes and sometimes lead to one or both of us being upset. But if you are, in my experience, paying attention to this person, caring about this person, communicating to them with the intent to support them versus the intent to make money, that changes the dynamic and the energy and even if things don't work out or people become unhappy, it's less likely to turn into this venomous like you were trying to screw me over thing because they can tell well, I mean, matt tried really, really hard and I'm not really happy with how that turned out, but I guess that's the way it works sometimes, like can't fault the guy, I like him right, or same thing with me. I know people haven't liked working with me 100%.

Matt Davis: 17:25

Well and we are presuming in this little initial conversation that we're dealing with good people and most of the people in the world are good people and they want to do right and they want to play fair. Now, there's a certain percentage out there that are just jerks right, and we have our personality profiles for that, because we're very psychographic in how we approach our clients and try and pay attention to what they need, and so you know. The other thing is the way we handle stuff really weeds them out, because those you know, the bad client types, are just energy vampires and money vampires and the whole thing, and they're there in every industry and we have certain types that show up again and again and we can spot them like that and get them out of our ecosystem If that's the right word as quick as possible.

Angie Colee: 18:32

Oh yeah, you definitely start to recognize them. Over the over, patterns emerge and you can tell hmm, sometimes my gut says I don't want to work with this person. Usually they've given you some sort of signal that they don't respect your boundary, they don't respect your expertise, or there's just, you know, sometimes it's a personality clash or it's a way you do business class. It doesn't always have to be that. It's a good, bad dynamic, but I do like that. You said that that you have all of your systems set up that really just filters those folks out, and I do the same thing. Like.

Angie Colee: 19:00

My goal is to make it as not fun as possible for one of those energy vampires to work with me. I'm going to gray rock the hell out of somebody that wants to take up all my time and be like no, I'm here to do this job. I fully support you while we're doing this job and if you need more from me, let's talk about what more from me looks like. What do you need? How can I accommodate that? But no, you're not going to email me at three o'clock in the morning demanding a new email sequence and then be pissed off at me at eight o'clock. That happened to me early in my copy career, by the way.

Matt Davis: 19:30

I get it. I mean, you know, we just had a guy and I was working on getting him out of our system and he knew I was on vacation.

Angie Colee: 19:40

And you know.

Matt Davis: 19:41

I've had a tough summer because my right hand lawyer I still do more legal work than I maybe should for running a company of my size, but I kind of like to be the team leader and I've got a great COO. Anyway, my right hand lawyer, she had the audacity to all often have a baby this summer without asking me, Right. I mean, what does she think? The nerve yeah, the nerve of that didn't, you know, didn't even consider me, and I'm thrilled for her. I love when you know we have new babies at the firm. So we just had that a grandbaby at the firm. So I'm pretty excited about that. His name is crew. So anyway, Katrina is thrilled. She's losing her mind over our first time, but anyway, you know.

Angie Colee: 20:31

I had a tough summer because then she decided to take off 90 days, which is great.

Matt Davis: 20:36

I'm happy for her. But this guy knows I'm on vacation and starts blowing up my text because he's mad at one of the attorneys. And you know, it's like you can call. You've got the COO's number, you talk to the COO, you're talking to K and it's like come on, man, you know. So they're out there.

Matt Davis: 20:57

They're out there and you know, in our world we, you know we talk about them as being either and this is a Venn diagram, once you think about it you know three circles, not four. You know deceivers there's just a lot of crooks in the law, business Right and dramatics. You know people who are always the victim and then debtors Debtors there's a lot of people who go other people in the money in the law. You know they need legal help Right.

Angie Colee: 21:29

Yeah Well guess what?

Matt Davis: 21:31

They're just thrilled to put us in line, right. So you know we've those are three of the big spots in our world, and that's a good way to categorize people, but, like, look for anybody listening.

Angie Colee: 21:46

I don't judge people based on who they are. If there's an immutable like aspect the color of your skin, your orientation, anything like that I don't fault you for that. I don't even fault you if, like you're a rabid sports fan or anything like that. The thing I take issue with is behavior. Period, end of story. So if any of those things that you believe impacts your behavior to where you're being a pick to people on my team, then we have a problem. We have a problem.

Matt Davis: 22:16

As we say it, we're all born naked and we're all going to room temperature.

Angie Colee: 22:20

Exactly All humans. Oh, this is such a fascinating I don't even know which direction to go. Oh no, I know which direction to go because I know an interesting part of your growth story that involves making a bad hire. Do you want to tell me a little bit more about that?

Matt Davis: 22:36

Yeah, so one of our very first attorneys that we hired when we started decided to moonline a whole lot on us and you know, she was very just weird and we could never get her productive. We've always been pretty reasonable about keeping track of KPIs and productivity and that's a good sign. You know, maybe it goes in the, those that are unfaithful in small deeds will also be unfaithful in large deeds. You know, there's a little principle for you, but we could never get her productive. And ultimately I saw a pleading coming through the office and I'm like this is not one of our cases and I just happened to see it there on the secretary's desk and I went and I looked it up and what looked up the case because it had online access and I'm like our firm is entered in this case as attorneys of record and it's not in our billing software and that's a big no-no. Yeah, that's just theft.

Matt Davis: 24:06

And ultimately on that, we went back through the emails and saw the secretary. She had given some documents in that and there were several other cases. We figured it all out and she just, incidentally, left on vacation the next day and so by the time she got back we had it all unpacked and I called her in and I'm just, I have my old partner there just as a witness and it was bizarre and I'm like, listen, here's what you're doing. You're not billing on our time and that's your obligation. You can't even keep your time to us, your commitment to us, and you're out here working Well, that was my brother's girlfriend, or four or five different deals like that and these people rewired my house for free and I'm like, well, I paid for it.

Matt Davis: 25:06

When I was paying you for the time, you weren't billing me more on that you owed us and I mean it was bizarre, and this was a grown woman with a law degree and just couldn't even grasp the ethical nature of what she did. They're out there. I mean these complete morons like that are out there and we shuffled her out very quickly and, by the way, I called in the secretary and said here's the email where she said oh, don't tell Matt about this. And so, secretary, you're either dishonest or too stupid to be working for us. So there's the door to Because you don't tolerate dishonesty with employees.

Angie Colee: 26:01

I mean, I've had conversations like that on this is when I was an employee, but I remember having a disagreement with another staffer where I just came to her honestly and said, if I have to choose between making you happy and making the person who signs my paychecks happy, I choose him. So how do we resolve this problem? Yeah, how do we work together on this problem? Like I can't even tell you how uncomfortable and upset I would be if somebody ever thought to come to me and say keep this a secret from the boss. And the only exception I could think about is if it's like a fulsome surprise for the boss. You know that the whole team is coming together to create something for them, but I can't see a world where it makes sense to keep secrets from the person signing your paycheck.

Matt Davis: 26:48

Yeah, and you know it didn't work out very well for either of them in the end. And you know we're good employers. And then, ultimately, you know we were talking about this from the standpoint of the audience having you know people who are starting businesses, and that's a pretty bad story. Most people don't have somebody do that, and I know, this.

Matt Davis: 27:12

Look, we're business lawyers. Guess what We've grown. You know grown, and by that I mean helped our clients grow hundreds of businesses, and that's a pretty egregious one, you know, yeah, you don't see that stuff that much. When you have somebody who's not living up to their key performance indicator, those are the ones that are going to be dishonest, those are the ones that are going to snake you.

Angie Colee: 27:36

Yeah, I mean and I know, like part of the reason that I loved that you submitted that story, that we were talking about it a little bit before the recording is with the people that I work with. That's one of the big fears of hiring. It's such a stretch, it's such a risk on so many levels. I'm going to invest money in this person, money that I maybe don't necessarily have or I really need it to pay off somehow, because I'm stretched pretty thin or I don't know how to manage people. I don't even know what to have them do. And then like, how do I manage this person? How do I get them to deliver on what I need them to deliver on, without watching over their shoulder and being a jerk and a micromanager? Right, there's a lot of fear around hiring your first person. She probably was not your first person, but stories like that make people go.

Matt Davis: 28:24

I don't know. I don't know. Look, those are rare and I know that from personal experience. I know that with our company growing and I know that from the you know just companies I've represented over the years. Maybe here's the lesson People tend to be really bad at managing employees because they don't understand the difference between abdication and delegation. And it's a really easy concept to get and it's really powerful when you get it right. So abdication is here. Go do this. I'm just going to throw you to the looks right, and you don't set the expectations. Well, maybe you did, but maybe you said I want you to go bill six hours a day, or I want you to go create this website within eight hours Okay, but delegation is okay. You do that. You set the task, you set what your expectations are and preferably attach some key performance indicators to it, some benchmarks, and then you build in the feedback loop and then you have a rhythm to that and you look at that and it comes back. So, for instance, we are devotees of scaling up.

Angie Colee: 29:57

And that's Vern Harnish's role. Vern Harnish.

Matt Davis: 29:59

Yeah, and real clear about everybody's responsibility. So Derek's our COO. He is responsible for attorney productivity. So Derek's retired Air Force colonel just top notch, top flight and everything he does. He was number 10 attorney in the Air Force. Well, but he manages attorney productivity. So he reports back to us all with the yellow report. Because our reports are all color coded, because we're too dumb to keep track of the real names of them, so we just talked about yellow, orange and blue.

Angie Colee: 30:35

That way we don't have to worry about Whatever works for you, color coded. That just brings my heart joy, anyway.

Matt Davis: 30:42

It's beautiful and I've done that for years. I just had a judge retire and he's like the best exhibits I ever had were these color coded exhibits that this attorney did. I can't even remember who he was and I'm kind of going and it's making it easy to remember. By the way, that's a good trick too is just making it simple, but yeah.

Matt Davis: 31:05

Derek reports back because he's been delegated the job of ensuring that we have attorney productivity. Trisha does the same thing. She's our CFI, which is really more of a chief revenue officer in our firm, because that's a big job in our firm and she does the orange report. Let's report back, and so when you build in those feedback loops, particularly with reports, with data, that makes everything so much easier. Katrina handles a client experience, which also means call intake, and she's in charge of making sure the attorneys are picking up the phone when it ranks.

Angie Colee: 31:52

Oh, that makes so much sense and I really like that for several reasons, because I don't think we talk about visibility and transparency enough, and they're very similar but they're also distinct. Visibility is the ability to see where everything is at and kind of understand what's happening on a macro level, on a micro level, and what needs to shift and where the gaps are. But transparency is the fact that you can see all of those little details for better or for worse, and that everybody is accountable to those deliverables, right, that they're actually reporting what's happening versus what makes them look good.

Matt Davis: 32:36

Yeah, you need those numbers, you need those metrics to be able to drive the firm and drive the company, because I can look at just a few numbers and know what's going on. Then you'll also get off on special projects that will have those that you're just trying to fix. By the way, I'm just complete tangent. Can I complete tangent?

Angie Colee: 33:04

Tangents. Welcome here.

Matt Davis: 33:06

Yeah, have you read Mike McCallowitz's new book Fix it Next?

Angie Colee: 33:12

No, I haven't. I'm going to write that down.

Matt Davis: 33:14

Yeah, it's actually called Fix this Next. Again, thank you for letting me do this. Wow, what he did is he took. Remember, I think it's Maslow, I think that's how you say it's.

Angie Colee: 33:32

Maslow's car. The hierarchy of needs.

Matt Davis: 33:34

He took that and he said look, let's redefine this for business. He came up with what's called the business priority principle. No, pyramid, business priorities pyramid, something like that BPPs what he calls it. He says look down here at the bottom, here's the basic things your business needs, like humans need food and shelter, here's what you need on second level, which is profits and so on, and just builds it up and he goes okay, so here's the deal.

Matt Davis: 34:07

What you fix next in your business is whatever's broken at the lowest level. By the way, even if you've done something once, you can get a crack in your foundation. For instance, we've grown a lot and we had a breakdown this summer in some of our marketing, which was pretty solid for where we were a year ago. Really, for the last three months I had to stop, drop and roll, go back down to that foundation and fix it. But I didn't realize that I was just doing what he talks about. I mean, I'm giving him a great free plug here and I'm pointing at the book over here. I have a stack of them that I'm giving to my leadership team. I'm like guys, this is the best book for helping small businesses understand what they need to prioritize, to build or to fix so that they can move up the food chain.

Matt Davis: 35:16

I was with a friend of mine this weekend who we've been trying to grow our law firms for the last eight years. We met eight years ago. I've done to some success. I mean we've got 30 employees, more probably. Anyway, we've enjoyed some success. He hasn't. I said have you read this book?

Angie Colee: 35:39

I know he hasn't, but I know why he hasn't?

Matt Davis: 35:42

because he hasn't invested in learning how to market, to go find opportunities. I've spent a lot of time doing that. Anyway, I'm very excited about that book, can you tell?

Angie Colee: 35:57

Yeah, no, I think that's great. What I loved, what I was hearing you rave about if I could reflect that back to you was something that I have experienced as an employee. I'm sure everybody here has experienced that once that's listening to the show today. That is the I'm trying to think of a way to phrase it like the putting out fires approach to problem solving. We're only going to focus on what is the most burning thing immediately, versus looking deeper to the foundational issues that led to this fire happening and keeps leading to the fires popping up. Turn off the electricity because it's causing multiple fires. Sometimes the solution is simple, but you have to go deep to find it.

Matt Davis: 36:45

That's an. He literally talks about that, which is let's figure it, here's the but. Here's where they are, here's where the problems are. You can define them right here. Fantastic book and yeah, I'm, you know, my fan boy has turned back on again. I've loved McKellowits for years.

Angie Colee: 37:03

Send him this episode. He's going to learn. He's going to learn.

Matt Davis: 37:06

Yeah, and he plugged me on my last book too. So, but you know, that's not why I'm plugging him, because if you get a chance, listen to the audio book. Because he's great, because he just smarts off the whole time. He had lips throughout the whole thing. His audience are great. So, yeah, I hope that's. That's the book that I'm really tossing out to our small business clients right now. Okay, this.

Angie Colee: 37:37

Yeah, and I think that ties back so nicely to what you were talking about at the beginning, about being invested in their success and protecting their dreams, and that's. I've heard this is going to sound like a tangent, but it's related, I promise. I've heard some people talk about well, people can't handle me because I'm honest. Well, honesty without empathy is just mean. You need people in your life who care enough about you to tell you the truth but don't destroy your soul in the process, and so I love that you've kind of appointed yourself that kind of guardian guardian of the dreams like that but cares enough about people to say, hey, here's what I'm seeing and here's something that really helped me. Maybe this will help you too.

Matt Davis: 38:17

You know there's a little trick to that. You know, believe and protect their dreams line, and you'll immediately get it when I tell you what it is the. The first people you have to believe and protect their dreams are your employees. Yep and Richard Branson, virgin companies and I was just listening to your fellow Texan oh gosh, what's his name? The chairman of the board he calls himself wrote the road less stupid. Anyway, great title. And you know you take care of your employees first, they'll take care of you.

Matt Davis: 39:06

And I was just at this conference with another lawyer and he suffers some ambition and once wants to go grow a law firm and he was cornered me and like how did you do it?

Matt Davis: 39:17

I'm like you got to love your people, you got to take care of them, you got to give them a great place to work and you got to give them a better place to work than everybody else in your market. Then all your competition and then you got to go figure out how to find them and get that message out there. And if you do that and you take care of them and you build a great culture which is not about nap rooms and, you know, good snacks, it's about how you treat each other. It's about you know loving each other and taking care of each other and supporting each other. Wow, so I guess, yeah, we really look at our clients as far as taking care of their dreams, because they want to go to a better place. That's our job to take them from where they are to a better place. But, by the way, the real secret is, do that for your internal customers, your employees, and bang there you go.

Angie Colee: 40:14

Amen. If I could get up on my chair and shriek how much I love that without knocking over it quick with it, I could definitely be cheering for that. I think that that's exactly where it starts, from the inside out, and no amount of repackaging how dysfunctional your company is is actually going to bleed through. I actually quit a job once because of that. The tagline was neighbors helping neighbors. But at the corporate office where I worked it was the workers backstabbing each other, throwing each other under the bus, doing whatever they could to get to the top and get their name known.

Angie Colee: 40:52

And I was one of those ambitious copywriters that took meetings with the president. I told the president I can't sell it anymore because I don't believe in it. And she said what do you mean? And I said we preach neighbors helping neighbors in all of our advertisements, in all of our commercials, our catalogs and whatnot. But we don't live it here at the corporate office and that bleeds through all the way to the end customer. I believe that very strongly. So no, I can't sell it. So we don't live it. And she was very much taking a bus.

Matt Davis: 41:22

Here's what she did. That means wow, Debbie, wow, she was blindsided.

Angie Colee: 41:33

I understand somebody at that level that has. I mean, we're talking about a chain with 100 stores. That's a lot to manage. No one person has visibility into every aspect of that business, so I'm sure that that did come as a surprise to her and also not a surprise.

Matt Davis: 41:49

You got to get out and you got to wander around and you got to listen and we have a saying that we apply to a lot of things. It's kind of an old country saying you've probably never heard it. Nobody seems to have heard it, but it's been part of my life forever and it's the best fertilizer is the farmer's footsteps.

Angie Colee: 42:11

Interesting. No, I haven't heard that.

Matt Davis: 42:14

And I don't know where it came from. I just, you know, mom or something, that's just. That's the way it was, and you know the idea is. You know, when you get out there you go get your hands dirty. You go check your fields, you're going to find some weeds, you're going to find some spots that need fertilizer. You know that's makes all the difference. So now you got to stay invested.

Angie Colee: 42:36

What a wonderful like lovely high note to wrap up on. Thank you so much for being on the show. I had no idea where any of this conversation was going and I love it.

Matt Davis: 42:47

Well, thanks. I love being here. It was really fun. I love talking shop, we love talking about business, and just you know this is what we do. It's it's part of the American dream and it's it's what we just love the privilege of being in the middle of.

Angie Colee: 43:00

Well, awesome For anybody that is curious or might want to investigate working with you. Where do they find out more information about you? How do they get in touch?

Matt Davis: 43:08

Yeah, davisbusinesslawcom is our website. Just check us out and you can track me down there and my my emails M is my initial M, davis at Davisbusinesslawcom and I. You know, unless you get stuck in spam, I keep like four emails in my inbox. I'm that dork.

Angie Colee: 43:28

So keeping it real for the podcast audience. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It has truly been a pleasure. I'll make sure that they have clickable links in the show notes so that they can reach out really easily. You know just this. Again, I would love to hear an update.

Matt Davis: 43:43

Sounds great. Thank you, love being on.

Angie Colee: 43:48

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the permission to kick ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.