#531: How To Turn Your Solo Law Practice into A Thriving Firm, with Gregory Rada

Episode Notes

Transcript

Zack Glaser (00:12): 

Hi, I’m Zack. 

  

Sara Muender (00:14): 

And I’m Sara Muender. And this is episode 531 of the Lawyerist podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks with Gregory Rada about veterans law. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:26): 

Today’s podcast is brought to you by CosmoLex, so stick around and you’ll hear my conversation with Joyce a little later on. 

  

Sara Muender (00:34): 

So Zack, what’d you been up to? 

  

Zack Glaser (00:38): 

Recognizing that I’m old, realizing the time moves forward, whether you like it or not, I guess. 

  

Sara Muender (00:44): 

Oh, this is getting existential fast. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:47): 

Right? So I have my 20th college reunion this last weekend, and it is really weird to say, oh, I haven’t been blank in 20 years. I haven’t done this in 20 years. And yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting to go back to your reunion. 

  

Sara Muender (01:10): 

It is so weird. Just out of curiosity, what were you doing at that point, or what did everybody think that you were going to go do? 

  

Zack Glaser (01:19): 

Oh man. I was a religious studies major, and I kind of thought I was probably going to go sell philosophy on the corner or something. And I don’t know, just go into academia and settle into there and just think big thoughts all the time. But yeah, I did not do that. 

  

Sara Muender (01:41): 

Maybe in a little different way. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:43): 

Yeah, a little bit. It’s a little bit different. I mean, I guess I do think big thoughts, but when you meet up with people that you haven’t seen in a while, the obvious question a lot of times is, what are you doing now? What do you do for a living? What’s your job? And I kind of reflected a lot this weekend on, I don’t feel like I have a job per se in kind of the normal way of it where I go in somewhere and I’m trading my labor for money. 

  

Sara Muender (02:18): 

Clock in, clock out. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:21): 

And I think some of it is that have been remote for years and years, but other parts of it’s, I don’t feel like what I do is a job. I enjoy it. It aligns with my values, it aligns with what I want to be doing. I’m not waking up and getting in the truck and driving somewhere and going to build athletic fields all over the southeast anymore. I’m waking up and doing the things that I want to do. And so I’m very lucky in that sense, but I don’t, don’t feel like I have a job a lot of times. 

  

Sara Muender (03:02): 

So it seems like there’s kind of some work life integration where it all just kind of blends together. Is that right? 

  

Zack Glaser (03:10): 

Yeah. 

  

Sara Muender (03:11): 

Yeah. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:11): 

It does. And that kind of, I question, am I supposed to be doing that? Is that okay? Is that a fine place to be? And I mean, I assume it’s a fine place to be. I’m happy. I’m in a good place. I enjoy my job and I can tell you, I can define my job. I still hit KPIs. I have goals, I have things that I do and people that I can specifically look at and say that I helped, but it doesn’t feel like I’m not making widgets. I’m not going in and performing surgery or anything like that. So I guess in a way it does kind of feel like I probably am in academia in a sense. 

  

Sara Muender (04:06): 

And I mean that makes sense given that we doing, we’re offering a service to people that is, the results aren’t necessarily obvious at a definitive time. In other words, the results happen over time. And that’s why we have to bring in those measurements to figure out, okay, where were we when you started? Now you’re here. Where did you want to be? Now you’re here. And so it’s not so obvious in service types of businesses, and I’m sure that some of our listeners can actually probably relate to what you’re saying because there are so many roles that we all have. And as a law firm owner, there are so many functions that the owner is filling, and especially small law firms, it’s usually all of them until they come start working with us and we help them get into their more ideal role and start delegating and whatnot. But yeah, I hate that question. What do you do? It’s so hard to answer, especially. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:10): 

Yeah, I make people’s lives easier. That’s what I do. 

  

Sara Muender (05:14): 

That’s all. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:16): 

I talk into a microphone. 

  

Sara Muender (05:18): 

You say, Hey, y’all. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:21): 

I say, Hey y’all a lot. Yeah, I record videos. You can kind of define that. But I think, yeah, getting back to what you’re talking about with the people that we help, a lot of times I think our Labster define themselves as I make my clients’ lives easier as opposed to I file divorces, I make my clients’ lives easier. And that’s a powerful thing to feel when you are okay with that being the definition of what you do. I’m okay with making a people’s lives easier, making them connect with technology more easily, making them run their businesses more efficiently. I’m okay with that being the definition of what I do, as opposed to I build websites, which there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with any of these other jobs. It’s just like my brain works that way. And yeah. 

  

Sara Muender (06:22): 

That’s what we coach our Labsters to do, though. You’re not just an estate planning attorney. You’re not just a family lawyer. In fact, we had a Labster, one of mine who I worked with a couple years ago, and she was a family law firm, and she figured out one day, because we’re always teaching them to think of what is the solution you provide to your clients? Specifically, what solution do you provide? And she says she realized she doesn’t sell divorces, she sells happiness. And so when you get really granular like that, it can help you actually with your marketing messaging. And so one little template, if you will, to figure out what that solution that you provide to your clients is if you can fill in, I help fill in the blank to do or with fill in the blank. So that fill in the blank is a real quick, easy way to get to the heart of it. And it’s pretty awesome when you realize the impact that you really truly make. It’s not just about the thing you do. 

  

Zack Glaser (07:32): 

Yeah, yeah, that’s true. Well, we’re going to have to get into Stephanie’s conversation with Greg Ratta here in a second. But I would love to hear how people define what they do. What is their job? What’s the different way that they kind of think of how they’re helping people? We’d love to hear about that on the interwebs and the socials where everybody’s finding this. And you can always send us an [email protected]. But now here is Stephanie’s conversation with Greg. 

  

(08:03): 

Hey y’all. Zack, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyers, and today I’ve got Joyce Brafford with me again from Profit Solve Time, solve CosmoLex, that whole profit Solve family of products. Joyce, thanks for being with me again. 

  

Joyce Brafford (08:20): 

Always a pleasure, Zack. Thank you. 

  

Zack Glaser (08:22): 

So today we’re doing a little segment sponsored by CosmoLex called Joyce Responds to Reddit. 

  

Joyce Brafford (08:31): 

So much fun. We spend all of our time here anyway, well, maybe not all of our time, but we spend a lot of our free time here, Zack, so it makes a lot of sense for us to talk about it. 

  

Zack Glaser (08:39): 

Yes. And so for the uninitiated, Reddit is a platform where people, it’s a discussion platform, I think is a good way of saying it, where people can talk about what they think and ask questions and give advice and all those things. And it’s kept in threads that are generally referred to as subreddits. And so if you hear somebody say that a subreddit is R slash law or R paralegal or something like that, that’s what they’re talking about. They’re talking about a kind of general area where you talk about something that has a theme to it. And so Joyce and I have a tendency to bounce around some of those legal related subreddits, our law firm, our small law, our paralegal, and we might get into some conversations or desktops with people there 

  

Joyce Brafford (09:30): 

Every now and then, every now and then, every now. And Zack, I think you and I are both pretty comfortable with our voice and our level of expertise and a few things, and maybe we like to speak up and maybe people tend to disagree with some things. 

  

Zack Glaser (09:44): 

So let’s talk about Reddit helps me go to sleep sometimes, but also keeps me up at night. So let’s talk about something that have kept you up recently. What’s a conversation or a thread or something that you’ve been kind of thinking about? 

  

Joyce Brafford (10:01): 

Yeah, there was one kind of tragic thread that I was on our law firm the other day where an associate at a law firm was just really struggling. The managing partners had told this person that they needed to be able to review every contract that came across their desk within two hours, regardless of volume of terms, regardless of total volume of the contract itself. And so what this poor person was struggling with is the challenge of getting through a hundred page contract review in two hours. And the managing partner thought, yeah, the managing partner thought that this was an acceptable service level agreement for all of their associates because they’re using an AI platform, an AI contract review 

  

Zack Glaser (10:53): 

Tool. Oh, why didn’t you just tell me they were using ai? That’s going to solve all the problems. 

  

Joyce Brafford (10:58): 

It’s going to solve all the problems. They’re just going to be able to bill more and they’re not going to make any mistakes and everything’s going to be 

  

Zack Glaser (11:04): 

Fine. Why is it going to take two hours? It 

  

Joyce Brafford (11:07): 

Should be why even go to work that day? 

  

Zack Glaser (11:09): 

Who needs lawyers? Come on. 

  

Joyce Brafford (11:13): 

So according to the managing partner, this AI tool reviewed the contract, any contract uploaded into it and provided some suggested changes. And that’s great. That’s wonderful. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:27): 

I’m with you. Yeah, I’m with you. That’s great. 

  

Joyce Brafford (11:28): 

And so if the suggested changes are already there, if it’s just a matter of checking the boxes and because this software is just completely right, then no, it shouldn’t take two hours. Just read through it and it should be fine. Unfortunately, the sales person or the technology company and the managing partner really didn’t think about the workflow of what it really means to do contract review on a day-to-day basis. And so this idea that this one particular tool could so drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to review of Aluminous contract, it’s just not realistic. So let’s take a step back and let’s really review what has to happen here, right? Because it’s not a matter of upload checks and boxes and you’re good to go. 

  

(12:13): 

You’ve got to review the contract. You’ve got to then review the suggestions that the AI tool has made to see if those suggestions are one based on fact or reasonable presumptions or something advantageous to my client. I’ve got to decide if the way that that modification is phrased is correct, if it’s in the right place, do I need to modify the suggestion in some way and then at that point accept or reject that change? So it’s not a matter of just checking the box. Every single suggestion has to be considered in the context of the larger contract because that is what contract review is. That is why you have an attorney that does it. So having those suggested changes within the document, incredibly helpful. Perhaps it’s covered everything, perhaps it hasn’t. Maybe there’s some other changes that also need to be made, but it’s not a matter of coming in and just shortening phases within an established workflow that you have when you implement an AI tool. You can’t just put it over your current process, kind of like a couch cover. That’s not what it is. 

  

(13:22): 

It’s not a couch cover guys. It’s an entirely new piece of furniture. So you need to think about when it’s going to be used, how it’s going to be used, how it impacts your current process if you’re going to keep pieces of your current process, but ultimately how it’s going to impact the outcome. And that outcome for the individual attorney doing the work then has to impact the billing rates or how clients are billed. You might even change your billing rate entirely or your billing process entirely, but it is not coming in and just painting the walls couch cover whatever it is. It truly is something entirely new that needs to be considered. And a lot of folks just failed to miss it. And this poor gentleman, I assume he’s a gentleman, this poor gentleman on Reddit was really struggling with how to approach this conversation with the managing partner because they were so fully bought in to this technology and he was really in a tough spot. 

  

Zack Glaser (14:20): 

Well, hopefully they were able to say something along the lines of, we need to use the tool for that, which it’s designed not necessarily that which we’re told that it’s designed. That’s right. At least it is right tool for right job. We’re talking about contract review, contract review tool. That’s right. But we have to define that job a little better sometimes. We have to make sure that we’ve defined that job. And the job is to assist me in language, to assist me in figuring out what it is I need to look at to make sure I’m not missing things. It’s not to come in, like you said, like a couch cover and just completely do all of these things for me and just make everything hunky dory, just perfect 

  

Joyce Brafford (15:08): 

It does not just smooth out the rough edges of your process. It doesn’t shorten phases within your project management. It truly is a change in your process. And if you’re not willing to consider how your process changes and to actually go through the process in the evaluation stage, maybe the company doesn’t let you go through a true trial, but go through a shortened period of time, see how this is going to work before you set expectations for your employees or even for yourself. Because if you buy something and you set your expectations based on what a salesperson told you, you are going to fail. You’re going to miss that Mark. 

  

Zack Glaser (15:51): 

That’s a good point, and I think that’s a good point for us to wrap up on. Absolutely. So use AI to work into your processes not to create new processes. Well, Joyce, thank you for being with me. I really appreciate it. If anybody wants to learn more about CosmoLex or the ProfitSolv family, they can always go to Cosmolex.com and get a demo, kick the tires and see how that works into their workflow and their processes. Joyce, thank you again. 

  

Joyce Brafford (16:18): 

Yeah, thank you, Zack. 

  

Gregory Rada (16:20): 

So my name is Greg Rada. I’m an attorney that practices veterans disability law. I’m a disabled Air Force veteran myself. I served in the United States Air Force from 2002 to 2008 as a cargo aircraft load master, which means I flew around in the back of a cargo airplane and delivered supplies and people all over the world. I went to law school after the Air Force to the University of Connecticut. And then once I graduated, I worked at a firm in Connecticut doing corporate healthcare work for about two years, got really burnt out on that. And in 2013, I started my solo VA disability practice, which has now grown to me and my wife, who’s also an attorney. And then we have two associated attorneys working with us. 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:17): 

Yes. Well, welcome Greg. And let me just start by saying this episode is airing on Veterans Day, and thank you for your service and thank you for all the work you now do with veterans. It’s such an important piece of our country, of our government, of our world that sometimes we don’t appreciate it enough. How about that? 

  

Gregory Rada (17:39): 

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on, and I appreciate the thanks. To be honest, when I enlisted in the Air Force, I was trying to get out of my parents’ basement, so it wasn’t that honorable, but it was what I needed. 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:57): 

Yeah, well, it’s honorable work. So you got there. My husband would have a similar story for why he ended up in the Army, so it all works. So I love what you’re building with your business. You’re having a lot of success, and I think some of the things you’re doing, this is going to be helpful for our community to hear. And so I kind of want to take you back to some of the early things that you did. Maybe you did a little bit differently when you started your practice and how that’s now really paying off dividends years later. So take us back to the beginning and what were some of the decisions you made early on that you think really contributed to your success now? 

  

Gregory Rada (18:39): 

So I started this out of the rental home that we’re living in at a tiny desk. And I think really two things contributed to where we’ve gotten today. I have an IT background, and so one of the most important things for me when I first started was getting my website up. I understood the importance of organic SEO and Google search. And so within my first year, I had a good website, it’s not what it is now. And I focused on adding content to that website, doing blog posts on relevant topics related to the cases that I wanted to work. And 10, 11 years later, that’s really paid off. Now I have 10 years of content and I rank on the first page of Google, and we get over half our business just from Google searches, not Google AdWords, just organic search. 

  

Stephanie Everett (19:46): 

Yeah. Wow. That’s great. 

  

Gregory Rada (19:48): 

Yeah, so that was a huge plus. 

  

Stephanie Everett (19:51): 

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people think the website’s sort of an afterthought or it’s just the nobody, it doesn’t really drive business, I just need to have it. And so they just kind of throw a page up. But it sounds like you took a different approach in not just putting a page up, but really then continuing to nurture it throughout this whole time. 

  

Gregory Rada (20:09): 

Exactly. I do think a lot of people look at it as it’s just kind of like a business card, but it can be a huge driver of your growth. If you’re putting up content that relates to what people are looking for in your practice area, they’re going to get direct to your page and they’re going to view you as an authority and want to work with you. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:33): 

Yeah. Awesome. All right. What else? 

  

Gregory Rada (20:37): 

Another big thing was getting a client management system from the beginning when I had two clients is when I signed up with Cleo. So it was the first month of starting my practice, and I know many attorneys who have kind of done their practice management system on an Excel file or Word document, but as you start to grow, it’s just going to slow you down. And so to me, and where we’ve gotten today, leveraging technology is huge. And starting that from the beginning, even though it may seem like overkill, I think was really helpful. It made my scaling much easier. I didn’t have to two years in rework from a Word document into a client management system. It was just all set up from the beginning. 

  

Stephanie Everett (21:31): 

Did you have a vision when you started of where you wanted this business to grow so that it allowed you to take some of these steps? 

  

Gregory Rada (21:41): 

My vision from the beginning was to be able to work remotely by myself and not really earn that much money, just wanted to be comfortable and afford to live and really just work by myself. I was really burnt out for my corporate healthcare job that I had out of law school. And at one point I thought I wasn’t going to do law at all. I was done with it. And the genesis of me getting into this practice area is that I had taken on a pro bono case at that law firm for a veteran, and I won his case based on finding a provisional diagnosis of schizophrenia. It was literally three words and a 10,000 page record that had been missed. And this Vietnam veteran went from no benefits being homeless to getting a full a hundred percent rating, which back then was about $3,000 a month. And that happened. I was like, that was awesome. That’s why I went to law school to help people not help a hospital bill a higher Medicare rate. And so that’s kind of the genesis of how this started. 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:59): 

But even then, I mean, it sounds like you’ve also kind of undergone a shift if you just started thinking, I just want to feed myself and my family and be comfortable, but now you have your wife and two associates working for you, so clearly it’s kind of grown beyond what you envisioned in the beginning. 

  

Gregory Rada (23:15): 

Yeah, yeah. So for the first 10 years or nine years, I was a hundred percent solo, just me. I did everything, no admin support. It was literally me. And I’d say around 2021, I started to get bored. I kind of had peaked at what I could do on my own without any support. And around that time, my neighbor came over who’s a veteran, and he does some coaching and he watched what I was doing and he was like, Greg, what are you doing? You’re doing admin tasks where you could hire someone to do that and you could focus on the higher value work and earn more. And he gave me this book, I think it’s been featured on here before, but how to Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. 

  

(24:14): 

And I’ve always been skeptical of, I don’t know, books, not books in general, like business coaching books, but I read that book last summer in Mexico, and I read it in three days and it just spoke to my soul. It really focuses on solopreneurs who’ve created a job for themselves as opposed to actually creating a business. And that’s where I was at. And so having started to get a little bored, just working on cases every day, same thing. And reading that book really inspired me to shift to creating an actual business, an actual law firm. And so we made our first hire about a year ago. My associate attorney, Peyton, she’s been awesome. And then we hired Eric, another attorney earlier this year, and it’s been great. It’s rejuvenated me. I had kind of mastered the VA legal work, and so this gave me something new to work on, namely actually creating a business operating procedures employees. So it’s been exciting and it’s been going really well. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:34): 

Yeah, I love that shift. And I think a lot of people, there is some psychology, there’s some research done about every 10 years. People want a shift, they want to switch it up because maybe we do get bored. So it’s interesting that that was about the same time for you that you were like, maybe what should I be doing with this? And then, okay, now I’m going to not just support myself. I’m going to create this business and what does that look like? And that’s how we got to know you. In all fairness, you’re in our lab program and been really focused on, okay, now what does it mean to grow a business? And one of the things I know you’ve done in the last year that I think a lot of people struggle with is revamp your client intake process. So I’d love for you to talk about what that’s been like and what it was before and maybe what it is now. 

  

Gregory Rada (26:24): 

Yeah, so over the past year, that’s been my biggest pain point because as we’ve grown, we’ve opened up other marketing channels. And so the influx of people contacting us has just skyrocketed. And as a solo, I would always talk, every single person that reached out to me on my webpage, there was a link where people could schedule free consultations with me, and I would literally talk to every single veteran that reached out. I kind of felt as a veteran myself, I wanted to talk to them. And even if it wasn’t a good case or a case we could handle, I want to talk to ’em and give them advice and let them know what they could do. But obviously as you scale a business that a single person can’t do that. So over the past year, we’ve kind of shifted or not, but we have shifted everything. 

  

(27:20): 

We’ve hired a full-time potential client coordinator, so her name is Tiffany, and she is the first point of contact for any veteran that reaches out to our law firm and our processes that Tiffany kind of has a script and lists of questions where she can get all the information from the veteran that I need to make a decision as to whether we can help. And if we’re interested in that case, I can then reach out to those potential clients. But it was tough. It was stressful. I still feel this obligation that I want to talk to everyone and help everyone, but it is just unfortunately not possible. And so for the cases that we can’t take, I can’t call people and tell them. And so now we just have a generic, we’re unable to help. Here’s some other resources. Here’s a directory of other lawyers that practice VA disability law, and I’ve just had to accept that that’s how it has to be, 

  

Stephanie Everett (28:24): 

But it’s not like you’re just saying no and turning them away. It sounds like you’ve created some resources for them so you can feel like, Hey, here are some things I can do to help you, which is provide information, and that is a way of helping. 

  

Gregory Rada (28:36): 

And 99% of the people are receptive to that. They write back and say thank you. I had always thought that they would be mad at me. It gave me anxiety. But no, it’s been good. I mean, a few months ago I was probably on the phone 25 to 30 hours a week with potential client calls, which is obviously absurd. And so now everything goes through Tiffany. We get the information we need, and it’s been much better. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:11): 

And do you still call them as a second follow up? 

  

Gregory Rada (29:15): 

So if it’s a case that we can help on, I will call then and I guess close the case. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:24): 

And what’s that shift in hours been like? Do you know? 

  

Gregory Rada (29:27): 

Yeah. I mean, it’s gone from maybe 30 hours a week down to two or three. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:33): 

Oh, wow. 

  

Gregory Rada (29:35): 

Yeah. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:35): 

That’s huge. You just gained 28 ish hours a week. 

  

Gregory Rada (29:40): 

Yeah, it’s been life changing. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:44): 

Yes. Yes, I would say so. And so now you can focus on so many other important things or 

  

Gregory Rada (29:52): 

Your 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:52): 

Family or whatever. You get to decide how you feel that time. 

  

Gregory Rada (29:55): 

Yeah, yeah, more business time. I thought when I was hiring attorneys that I would get time back and it shifted from legal work now to business marketing work, which is fine. I’m excited by it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:12): 

I think a lot of people, when you think about that client intake process, especially when you’re solo or very small and you’re involved in all the calls, we do feel this sense of, but people are going to want to talk to me or I need to talk to them. And I think there’s a lot there that you spoke to around the psychology of us being on those calls. How’s that shift going Now looking back, what would you tell someone that’s in your shoes and hearing this thinking, wow, could I do that? Could I get out of 28 hours of calls a week? 

  

Gregory Rada (30:45): 

Yeah, I, that’s what held me up from ever hiring an intake person. And one of my colleagues who runs a big VA firm in this area told me, he’s like, they don’t care. They just want their case to be won. And I had this hangup that people were hiring me because I’m a disabled veteran myself. I’m not just a random lawyer working in this practice area. And I think my colleagues correct, sure me a veteran’s, a little bit of a selling point, but in the end, people just want competent representation and someone to win their case. And I struggled with that, not only on intake, but when I hired attorneys that people are reaching out to me, they want to work with Craig. And something that helped me with that, when I sign a client, I say, you’re going to be working directly with me and one of my associate attorneys. We work on everything together, and then it’s a soft handoff to my associate attorney and they run with the case. And I’m high level overview. I haven’t had any pushback. No one’s said, Hey, how come Payton’s working my case, not Greg? I think it goes to presenting it as we’re a team, everyone works on it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:06): 

You can tell your personal story to those prospective clients on your website in the blog. And now I know you’re doing a YouTube channel. There’s lots of ways you can tell that story. So they know when they reach out to your firm, they are getting you with that experience, but now you’ve created this team based on your experience. 

  

Gregory Rada (32:25): 

Exactly. And that was one of my roadblocks. I didn’t think people would accept that, but they have, I guess more credit to clients that they understand how a law firm works. It’s not going to be the managing partner doing every single part of your case. It’s a team effort. 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:45): 

Ding, ding, ding. That might be the winning phrase of this whole podcast for everyone to go back, rewind right now, 30 seconds and listen to that again. And we should put it on repeat and tell ourselves that all the time because, and maybe even clients would frown upon it if a dentist came out or if your doctor came out and was like, Hey, I need to get the information to put it into our billing system. You would kind of look and be like, what are you doing? What do you mean? You’re the doctor? Why are you doing this administrative work? That’s weird. And somehow, but we’ve got it in our heads that clients expect us to do all these parts of their work, and that’s just not the case. 

  

Gregory Rada (33:25): 

Yeah, I should have given more credit to clients, people, you’ve obviously created a business. You know what you’re doing. It’s kind of weird that Greg’s doing all the administrative work. And so that was, I think, a roadblock that really wasn’t an issue. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:46): 

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that. I know so many people struggle with that. That is a real tripping point for a lot of us, and we think we’re important, all the things that go into and we are, but we don’t have to be the only one to do it. Maybe that’s the right way of saying it. 

  

Gregory Rada (34:06): 

Yeah, absolutely agree. 

  

Stephanie Everett (34:08): 

Awesome. Well, what’s next for you in your firm? What are you going to work on now that you’ve got these 28 hours back? 

  

Gregory Rada (34:17): 

So our big focus now is growing our YouTube audience. Veterans love educational videos on VA benefits, even when they have all the benefits they can get. They love YouTube videos. And so we launched our YouTube channel earlier this year, almost up to 1500 subscribers, and that’s just been really exciting. I wish I had started social media earlier, and maybe this doesn’t apply to every practice area, but at least with veterans, YouTube has been amazing. They engage, they comment, they ask questions. We’re steadily growing our following, and so a lot of our time is dedicated to that now. 

  

Stephanie Everett (35:07): 

Yeah, that’s awesome. Us too, by the way, and hey, I’ll put in a little plug this show, this podcast is now available on YouTube with video, and we’re already seeing a lot of people start to engage with us that way, where it’s just been an audio show for the first however many years, and now we’re like, let’s go to YouTube. And you’re right, it’s kind of a fun place to be. There’s a lot of activity. 

  

Gregory Rada (35:32): 

Yeah. I mean, it’s a great way for people to see you and your personality without you having actually talked to every single one of those people. And so me and my wife do it, and we’ll get calls and they’re like, we’ve watched every single one of your videos. We feel like we know you. You’re our family. So it’s a great way to engage with potential clients. 

  

Stephanie Everett (36:00): 

Absolutely. People hire who they know, trust, respect. So that ability to be able to watch you and your wife on video and get to know you. Absolutely. And then when they pick up the phone and call you, it’s like, yeah, we already know you. So that’s a great way and that’s an easy way for any firm that’s thinking about this. To get started, I think, what did you guys have to do? You just bought a microphone and created a little strategy and started shooting. 

  

Gregory Rada (36:30): 

Yeah, that’s really about it. I am a perfectionist, so I delayed over a year. I wanted the best mic and the best camera, which I still don’t have. I’m using a iMac built-in webcam on my screen. And people just kept telling me, just start. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can work on those things as you progress. And so finally we did it. And I guess the other hard part is finding someone to edit the videos. It’s definitely helpful to be able to cut out the pauses and the ums and which I do a lot as you can hear. But yeah, I mean, once that’s set up and is in place, you just sit there and talk about the things that you know and you get better and better as you do it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (37:24): 

Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Greg, I am glad you’ve been with us today and shared these things. I think everyone listening right now is like, wow, 28 hours. Okay. No, it’s true though. But one decision, one thing, you found a great leverage point, and it’s just a great reminder that sometimes we think, I often ask people in coaching calls, what should you stop doing immediately? We always think about what do you start doing? But in this case, what should you stop doing? And this one point made such a huge difference. I think that is an amazing takeaway for everyone to hear. And then my challenge to everyone is what do you need to stop doing right now? If it can gain you 25, 28 hours a week, let’s go. That’s awesome. 

  

Gregory Rada (38:10): 

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I look at it kind of like whack-a-Mole. Like what’s my biggest point pain point? Let’s address that, get it down, look for the next pain point. And obviously most of these are not going to be 25 hours a week savings time. It may be half an hour, but all of that adds up and just makes you more and more efficient. And so it’s a constant game of how can I make this process more efficient? What new technology is out there that can speed things up? And I think that’s really lent to our success. 

  

Stephanie Everett (38:44): 

Absolutely. 

  

Gregory Rada (38:45): 

With the help of the Lawyerist. 

  

Stephanie Everett (38:48): 

Thanks. We’re happy to help. Thank you. Thank you for being on the show today. Well, it was great. 

  

Gregory Rada (38:54): 

Thank you for having me. 

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