#504: Leveraging Franchise Know-How in Law Practice, with Chad Fox

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

 

Zack Glaser (00:35): 

Hi, I’m Zack. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:36): 

And I’m Jennifer Whigham. And this is episode 504 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Zack Glaser talks with our newest lab coach, Chad Fox, about operationalizing a firm and lessons he learned from his work in franchises. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:51): 

Today’s podcast is brought to you by CosmoLex, and you’ll hear my conversation with them shortly. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:57): 

Zack Glaser, guess what we have coming up in September LabCon. Do you remember what that is? 

  

Zack Glaser (01:05): 

Vaguely, vaguely. Could you help me out? 

  

Jennifer Whigham (01:08): 

You need a little help out? Okay. So LabCon is number one, my favorite thing of the year, and number two, it’s an unconference, as we call it, two and a half days, where all of the members, all the small firm lawyers in our lab program get together in person to work on their business. We call it an unconference because it’s not like we’re doing a bunch of talking at the front of the room. There’s not an exhibitor hall or anything like that. We get together, small groups, learn some new things, figure out what needs to get done, and our labsters leave it having gotten stuff done, I have a real plan. And in between that, we have a lot of fun. We do some fun things, have good meals together, and generally just get to be around our community. So that is happening September 22nd through the 25th, just outside of Chicago. It’s in St. Charles. It’s at this beautiful, beautiful space called the Q Center and 

  

Zack Glaser (02:06): 

More like the cute center. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (02:08): 

Oh man, I wish I thought of that. I wonder if they’ve thought of that. You should sell that as a marketing jingle for them. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:15): 

Yeah, yeah, definitely. We all know that’s how I make my money anyway. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (02:19): 

Yeah, marketing jingles. I know. I know. That’s your entire second job. I just hear it on commercials all the time. It’s actually getting pretty annoying to hear you. Just kidding. I love your marketing jingles, but we have early Bird Lab con registration going on right now, and it’s not just open to our labsters though. If you’re in lab, you get either free registration or a discount on registration 

  

Zack Glaser (02:43): 

Depending on what level of lab you are. Okay, 

  

Jennifer Whigham (02:46): 

Yeah. What level of lab you’re at. But if you’re not in lab yet, this is a really good way to see what lab is all about. It’s a good way to get your feet wet in it and see if this is a community for you. And so we do open 10 seats for people not yet in lab, and we’ll have them in the show notes. We’ll have all the information, what you need to know, how to register for it. If you end up joining Lab after Lab Con, we take the cost of the registration off of your lab subscription for the first month. It’s pretty good deal. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:18): 

Yeah, that does sound like a pretty good deal. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:20): 

I know. It’s so fun. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:22): 

When is it again? 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:23): 

September 22nd through the 25th, just outside Chicago, Illinois. And beautiful St. Charles at the Q slash Cute center. And it’s all on site. The rooms are on site. It’s a conference center, so you’ll stay there. We have the meals there. You’ll get it all inclusive. There’s tons of trails. It’s beautiful. There’s fitness centers, there’s activities. It’s a really cool, all inclusive place. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:49): 

Is there a golf course? 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:51): 

Was there one? I can’t remember now. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:52): 

Yeah, there was, 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:54): 

But was it like three was three holes or something? 

  

Zack Glaser (03:57): 

I don’t know. I don’t play golf. That was just the only thing that I can remember that you hadn’t touched on yet. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:02): 

Yeah, I remember Golf holes. I don’t know if that makes a course. I remember saying holes in the ground on green AstroTurf. Is this just a dream I had or was this actually at the Q Center? 

  

Zack Glaser (04:15): 

Well, I mean the Q Center is a dream. It’s like a dream. It’s true. We should do their advertising apparently. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:22): 

Apparently. I mean, it’s great. We’re doing mini events, but also if you go to the LabCon, most exciting thing is you would get to meet Zack Glaser. You get to meet me, you get to meet Stephanie Everett, you get to meet all the Lawyerist people, if that is your thing. If you hate us all, you just let us know and we’ll hide when you’re there. No big deal. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:40): 

Well, and you’ll get to meet Chad Fox. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:44): 

Good segue, 

  

Zack Glaser (04:46): 

Who I have a conversation with coming up right after my conversation with CosmoLex here. 

  

(04:55): 

Hey, y’all. I’m Zack, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and I have Joyce Bradford with me again from Profitsolv specifically today, though, I guess CosmoLex or just as a law practice advisor. I mean you do that, do CLEs out there with all that. So yeah, Joyce, thanks for being with me. 

  

Joyce Bradford (05:15): 

Oh, Zack, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:17): 

Absolutely. So we were talking before we started recording here about killing the billable hour and Stephanie’s mission to kill the billable hour, and I think a lot of people’s mission to kill the billable hour, but we were talking about how some people get caught in the middle of even if they want to do that, even if they want to move to that, they get caught in the middle of wanting to do flat fee things or alternative billing models, but still the reality of having to do hourly rates, but there’s not a lot of flexibility in billing. 

  

Joyce Bradford (05:52): 

Well, you think, right? Well, luckily for us, we live in the future. We have all of these amazing software companies that are out there that want to make it easy for all of us to bill our clients and get paid, and they recognize my company, CosmoLex included. They recognize that this is not an easy transition from a billable hour model to any alternative fee arrangement. And one of the wonderful things that I love about CosmoLex is our flexible billing arrangements, our flexible billing templates. So if you want to go full in and say, I’m going to charge a flat fee, I’m going to estimate my total amount of time and my total expenses and build in a profit margin, and this is what I’m going to charge my client, I can do that same thing with contingency, and I want to recoup a specific percentage from a winning, but sometimes, especially if we’re new to this, we just get it wrong. We just have to make some adjustments, lawyers make mistakes, and that’s okay. What? 

  

Zack Glaser (06:49): 

Yeah. Yeah. 

  

Joyce Bradford (06:50): 

How dare we? How dare we. But yeah, so you have the ability within CosmoLex, specifically CosmoLex to have a flat rate fee, to have a contingency billing agreement, but to also add billable time expenses that you can recoup for. So it’s very flexible for anyone just getting into an alternative fee model. 

  

Zack Glaser (07:09): 

Right. Well, and I think that alternative fee model phrasing that you’re using there, I personally use that deliberately, and I know you do too because we’re not just talking about flat fee when we’re talking about alternative billing. That’s right. We’re talking about very creative things that people come up with. And in order to be creative, you need some flexibility in how you do your billing. 

  

Joyce Bradford (07:32): 

You do. One of the things that I’ve been talking to a lot of folks about recently is subscription based billing. So billing the same amount month over month, and it’s very similar to a retainer agreement. It’s just monthly, monthly, monthly. I have access to an attorney, but sometimes in those scenarios, more time than I’ve agreed to, gets allotted to a specific client, more cost than I’ve agreed to have upfront need to be paid by this firm. So no matter if it’s subscription, if it’s flat fee, if it’s some creative percentage based billing thing that you’ve imagined, basically whatever you can envision for your firm, you’ve got some flexible billing templates within CosmoLex to have your baseline, but then you’ve also got the ability to make those ad hoc changes as necessary because this is new ground that we’re breaking. This is new territory that we’re exploring, and I think that it’s important that we all understand we’re human beings and we’re trying to do the best for our clients and for our firms, for ourselves and our families. So we need some flexibility here. And CosmoLex provides it. 

  

Zack Glaser (08:40): 

I think another thing that CosmoLex specifically as a holistic soup to nuts law practice management software is that you can track things. So even if you’re doing a flat fee and you hinted at this a little bit, even if you’re doing a flat fee, you need to know what that type of case costs anyway. That’s right. And so doing a flat fee doesn’t mean that we’re not tracking our time, we’re just not necessarily billing by the time. And something like CosmoLex allows you to look at those things and look at how much time have I spent? What are my expenses? What can I recoup? What can I not recoup? And what’s my ROI on this particular case? 

  

Joyce Bradford (09:20): 

That’s exactly right. Whether it’s billable, non-billable, no charge, I have the ability to track all of that time. If I overcharge and I need to write something up, I have the ability to track my write offs too, so I can look at the value of my time build versus my actual time spent. And those are really powerful metrics, Zach, when determining where to invest in new technology, where I’m at my practical limits for getting work done and where I need to make some adjustments. I mean, this is a business and it needs to be a data driven business for you to be as successful as possible 

  

Zack Glaser (09:50): 

Success. And so you can, as they say, measure what matters. Yeah, 

  

Joyce Bradford (09:54): 

Exactly. 

  

Zack Glaser (09:55): 

So CosmoLex will do obviously a lot more than you’re spilling. As I said, it’s kind of soup to nuts. It’ll also track a lot of your project management and things like that, which brings it into how much does this cost, how much does my work cost as an attorney, and how much is it costing somebody? So I think that’s very important for people to get a hold of as attorneys is what sort of time am I spending? How much money is that going? Is that to, and then tracking everything. I remember my father telling me when I first started practicing, it was like, bill for the thing and then write it off. If you want to charge somebody less, fine, but put it as a line item and then scratch through it if you need to. 

  

Joyce Bradford (10:41): 

Exactly. There’s no harm in that. Keep track of what you’re doing, keep track of your work product, keep track of yourself. You are valuable. You are a resource. Your clients come to you because they agree to engage with you. They believe in the value of your services. They know that it’s going to cost money, and if you have an agreement with them where you expect something to cost a certain amount of money, then you can certainly write it off. But whether it’s to track your own value to adjust your rates for future matters, or just to show your clients how hard you work for them, and you want to get those referrals in the future, track your time, track your expenses. Yeah, exactly. Write it off if you need to, but never, ever, ever believe that you shouldn’t record your work or your expenses because it’s going to be offensive to your clients. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:28): 

Right, absolutely. Well, and I think here the key is flexibility in letting attorneys create their own or deal with their own billing in a creative and hopefully alternative and beneficial way for them and their clients. So if they want to do that and they want to learn more about that, they can always go to CosmoLex dot com and learn more. Joyce, thanks for being with me. I always appreciate it. 

  

Joyce Bradford (11:57): 

Thanks, Zack. Appreciate your time. 

  

Chad Fox (12:02): 

Hi, my name is Chad Fox. I started here at Lawyerist about a month ago, actually today would be my one month anniversary, started on April the eighth, and I’m excited to join the Lawyerist team and help lawyers to build their businesses, create legacies, optimize their processes, build teams. These are the things that I’ve done in the past. I come from a background of franchising and at one point had over 150 employees. I helped to grow that portfolio of franchises to 20 million in revenue, led the leadership team and led the owners to an eight figure exit back in 2018. And I’m excited to be here chatting with you today, Zach. 

  

Zack Glaser (12:55): 

Chad, thanks for being with us today. I appreciate you being on the podcast, and I always appreciate your perspective on running firms, running businesses and all those things. We’ve met a couple of times in person, which is kind of crazy for Lawyerist because we just had a all team retreat where you and I met. It was your first day. 

  

Chad Fox (13:15): 

It was my second day. I flew out for the retreat on the morning of my second day with Lawyerist. 

  

Zack Glaser (13:23): 

Oh man. That is actually not the craziest first day story that we have at Lawyerist, but the day that I met you on your second day, I also got to meet one of my other coworkers who I work with a lot, and I’ve worked with her for three years, and that day was the first time meeting her as well. So we are a fully distributed team that works a hundred percent remotely. But I appreciate that you and I got to sit down and talk a good bit there and to learn a lot about your background specifically as I’d like to kind of dig into today in franchises, running franchises and helping people with that type of business because it’s business is business in some ways, but also no business is the same in other ways. It’s its own special little snowflake just like everybody else. 

  

Chad Fox (14:20): 

That’s true, 

  

Zack Glaser (14:21): 

But that’s not completely true. That’s what we’re trying to fight against in franchising, right? 

  

Chad Fox (14:25): 

Yeah, I mean, so when it comes to franchising, like I said, my recent background is in franchising and exited three businesses in total. Franchising was a big piece of that and really where I had a lot of growth as a business owner and as a leader. 

  

Zack Glaser (14:42): 

So talk to me about franchises. I don’t know anything about franchises other than that. I go to Yum Foods places all the time, and they’re all franchises or that I know a lot of gyms are franchises, and you can make a lot of money by buying into a franchise, but quite frankly, I have no idea how, 

  

Chad Fox (15:07): 

Yeah, franchises are are great, but they also can be very expensive. So an investor or somebody that wants to own a business might buy into a franchise because its, chances are if the franchise has their ducks in a row, then all the systems and processes are all laid out for you. All the training material is laid out, everything’s documented. There’s training in place. You really could just, if you could step in as an owner and execute the system well then you’re most likely going to have success in franchising. And so that’s really why people get into it. 

  

Zack Glaser (15:44): 

So there’s kind of two aspects of this franchise game. Then there’s the buying into a franchise kind of saying, Hey, I want to open a gym in my area, and I could either just straight up open a gym, create all my operations manuals and things like that, or I could potentially buy into a gym franchise for X amount of dollars. So that’s one kind of entry into the idea as a franchise. But the other side is the Ray Crocs, the people that create the franchise as well. So there’s kind of two ways to get into the franchise game, right? Yeah. 

  

Chad Fox (16:20): 

I mean, like you said, you can invest in a franchise that’s already established and you get the power of that brand behind you, and they’re going to handle all the marketing to drive people in your local area and all those types of things. But then you could also build a business, open up a few locations, and then you could create a franchise out of it. 

  

Zack Glaser (16:42): 

So what your experience with franchising when you were doing that, what side of that coin were you? 

  

Chad Fox (16:49): 

Yeah, we invested in a brand that was already established and it was a fairly new brand at the time, and our first two locations were previously owned by somebody else, and those locations were both struggling. They were losing 20 grand a month between the two of them. And when I stepped into those businesses, one of the biggest problems that they were having was they weren’t following the processes. And we have processes and procedures and systems in place, and I had secret shop to those businesses prior to us actually finalizing a purchase so that I could kind of get an idea of what was going on. And secret shopping is a fantastic way to get insight into businesses, by the way. And so through that I’ve recognized pretty quickly that the biggest problems was processes weren’t being followed, and so we invested in an established brand with processes in place that were not being followed. 

  

Zack Glaser (17:48): 

That would be my question is why purchase those franchises, those locations, if you know that they are struggling? Obviously you secret cho to ’em, obviously you saw, but why not just start a new one, kind of say, okay, well we’re just going to go over here and spin something up that’s competing even. 

  

Chad Fox (18:11): 

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons we did that was because of price. So we were able to get in because they were both losing money. Typically when you are stepping in to buy a business, you’re going to do three or four x cashflow for the previous year, and that’s going to be what you’re going to offer. But when you have a company that’s losing money, then that’s a little bit different. So that really just ended up being us stepping in and taking over a note and taking over the lease, and then that was how we got our foot in the door. 

  

Zack Glaser (18:41): 

So what gave you and the other investors, the other people in this confidence that you’d be able to go into this franchise and make it work succeed where others failed? 

  

Chad Fox (18:56): 

So basically by secret shopping and being able to understand what was going on, I had confidence that we’d be able to step in and make sure, basically step in, retrain the team on the processes, coach the team, make sure the processes are being followed. We could see a pretty clear path to success. And by stepping into something that was already established, we didn’t really have to go out and hire a whole new team. We didn’t have to shop for real estate. I mean really just all of that stuff that would go, we didn’t have to wait for a build out and permits and all these other things that go into being able to build a new one, which we did build new ones as well, but we also did acquisitions and we really saw a great opportunity. They were both in great locations and knew that if we could turn them around, which like I said, we were pretty confident we could, as long as we could get the processes going in the right direction, get everybody essentially rowing the boat in the same direction, we could do that. We could come out very nice at the end of it. 

  

Zack Glaser (20:00): 

Yeah. Okay. So that’s how you got into the franchise and game and got deep into that. But for us specifically at Lawyerist and you coaching our lawyers, our Labster now, how does all of that fit into running a law firm or benefiting a lawyer or law firm? 

  

Chad Fox (20:23): 

Yeah, my hallucination is that lawyers don’t want to practice law forever. That they’re stepping into this with the hopes that they’re going to one day be able to sell their firm and move on into something else or retire and live on a yacht or whatever their retirement plan. I don’t know. It’s different for everybody, whatever that looks like for that particular law firm and what you don’t want, what somebody’s not going to want to buy is a mess. So at least not if the lawyer wants to make any money on the exit. 

  

Zack Glaser (21:03): 

And yeah, I was about to say, if they do buy the mess, that’s going to be what you essentially were looking for in finding something on the cheap. That’s right. It’s on the auction block at that point. 

  

Chad Fox (21:14): 

Yep, that’s exactly right. So if I’m a lawyer and I’m looking to one day exit my business, I want to have my processes solid, my foundation solid, my team is solid, and my business is making money, I got nice cash flows that’s going to give me a valuable business that I could potentially exit one day. But on the other hand, if I’m just kind of winging my business and I don’t really have anything solid, and now I one day decide I want to exit, where’s the value for the person that’s looking to buy it now? They’re going to have to come in and put those processes in place and solidify the team and make sure the foundations are strong and prepare the business for potentially one day they might want to exit it. And so by having all that stuff in place now, you add tremendous value to your law firm, puts you in a position to be able to exit it one day. And if you don’t do that, then you risk losing money on the sale. 

  

Zack Glaser (22:15): 

Yeah, I mean, I’ve acquired firms when I was still practicing acquired firms and essentially what I acquired and really on the cheap in the sense of just kind of, I don’t want to say giving somebody a job, but I acquired a paralegal along with work and they were the one that knew how to do everything. That was the processes that we acquired. And that was inexpensive because it was just saying, Hey, we’ll employ this person along with taking on these cases. And so that’s the way that we purchase the processes and that wasn’t really that valuable to that. 

  

Chad Fox (22:53): 

And what’s the risk there? What happens if that paralegal doesn’t stick around after the sale is finalized, then now you have a business and nobody around that knows how to do any of the stuff that needs to get done? 

  

Zack Glaser (23:06): 

Oh yeah. One of the first things that we set to doing was writing down what it was she did, all the people she knew, all the processes she had in her head, we set to writing that down and we’re able to, that way when we go to sell or pass on the firm, we actually had that in place. 

  

Chad Fox (23:29): 

Exactly. 

  

Zack Glaser (23:30): 

Okay. So I know I’ve got to have processes. I think everybody, it’s that hated not so secret, secret of like, I do need to have this stuff written down. I need to have an operations manual. I need to have modus operandi, but how do I do that? I think that’s the biggest struggle is how do I even get started? It’s a huge task, wasn’t built in a day. 

  

Chad Fox (23:57): 

Yeah, it is a huge task, but it’s worthwhile. It’s a worthy task to take on as a business owner, especially if you want to exit one day. And where you start is from the very first time a lead comes in, start with that. And maybe you even start prior to that. Maybe you start with how you are acquiring your leads, but if we’re just talking about the day-to-day operations of the business, you start with where the lead comes in and then how you work the lead from there. And you really just go through all of the steps of your process from start to finish and you figure out what needs to happen at each point in the process from acquisition to the time that you closed the case and even after you closed the case. 

  

Zack Glaser (24:47): 

So what if my answer to you when you ask me to do that is I don’t know. I just do what I know to do. I’m the lawyer, I just do what I know to do. My assistant comes to me and asks me what to do and I tell them what to do. 

  

Chad Fox (24:59): 

If you asked me that question, I would say to you, what if you’re not there? 

  

Zack Glaser (25:03): 

Okay, if I’m not there, I’ll be there the next day. And I say this because I get this back from people as well, is like, I can’t write down my processes. The excuse I hear, I can’t write down my processes because everything is different. Every case is different. What would you say back to that? 

  

Chad Fox (25:25): 

I agree that there’s going to be differences in the cases. I do think that there is still an opportunity to be able to have a framework to work off of, even if the cases are different and every case is different, you could still create at least a general framework to begin with on how things should go. 

  

Zack Glaser (25:46): 

So I don’t have to have every single thing filled in for these processes in order to have it work and benefit me. 

  

Chad Fox (25:57): 

Yeah, I think you start with a framework, something general, something broad, and it’s not going to be perfect to the first draft. If it’s not going to be perfect, it’s probably going to be terrible, and that’s okay. And then you continue to experiment and tweak it and add things and take things out. And creating a process is in itself a process where you build it and then you keep tweaking it and fixing it until you have it where you want it. 

  

Zack Glaser (26:25): 

Lawyers, do not like to hear the, this is going to be a crap first draft. But no, I think it’s important to say because this is going to be a crap first draft. It is, and it’s a first draft that’s not finished, but you’re moving forward. The key is just to iterate over this thing. We’re not doing it all in one fell swoop. You can’t just sit down and say, okay, well, I’m going to write all these processes today because I took three hours and set it aside. That’s not going to get it done. I like to ask people, where do you write your processes? Because you can kind of think about them in many different ways, and it’s all in how your brain does it. You could do processes in a Miro board, you could do processes in Excel spreadsheet. Where would you write down these processes initially? How would you start? 

  

Chad Fox (27:20): 

For me, I would do it in Word. I like word using a Microsoft Word, putting it in a document with bullet points and clearly separated sections and being able to bold things. And for me, that’s how I see things. And so I’m documenting these things in a Word document and building it out like that. 

  

Zack Glaser (27:41): 

Who writes these? Does the lawyer have to be the one that puts these into place that writes everything? 

  

Chad Fox (27:47): 

No, Zach, I don’t think the lawyers should be the one that’s doing the work here. I don’t think that’s where their time is best spent. That’s not where they’re going to add the most value to the law firm. I think this is the work of the team. And I think in most cases, and I definitely saw this in my business, I didn’t know a lot of the intro workings of the business and I didn’t need to, that was not my role. That’s not where I add value. And most often it’s going to be the team that’s going to know those things even better than the lawyer. 

  

Zack Glaser (28:19): 

And they should, because like you said, you didn’t need to know those things because that wasn’t your role. When I was practicing, somebody would be out or something like that, and I would need to take on somebody’s responsibilities and I had no idea what to do. It was things that I had initially created the processes for that had adapted, that had changed. I didn’t know the specific process for filing something in Rutherford County, Tennessee, because it had been two years since I had created the process, and my team member had adapted it and updated it and changed it, but I needed access to that. I needed to know what to do in order to be able to fill in. And I think that’s important because of something we haven’t touched on yet. Scalability, if you’re the only one that knows how to do these things, if you’re the lawyer and you say, I don’t know, somebody just asks me how to do this, and I tell them each time how we’re going to do this case, that’s not scalable, 

  

Chad Fox (29:19): 

Right? Yeah, it’s not scalable. And if you are looking to expand and continue to grow the business and scale the business, so you have to have those things in place because as you scale, you’re going to bring on more and more team members. And if the lawyer’s the only one that knows that stuff, then who’s going to be the one that’s going to train all these new team members on the processes? It can’t be the lawyer. So two things are going to happen at that point. Either the lawyer’s going to be spending time training everybody and not practicing law or doing the things that they can do to grow the business. Or you’re going to have a bunch of people on your team that don’t know what the heck’s going on and don’t know what they’re doing 

  

Zack Glaser (29:58): 

Well. So yeah, I kind of want to dig into that a little bit. We talk about lawyers best and highest use being practicing law a lot of times, but in a firm, sometimes the lawyer’s best and highest use is running the business. And so what you’re saying there though is even in a franchise, the person running the business’s best and highest use is not training people and creating the processes. 

  

Chad Fox (30:25): 

Absolutely correct. It is definitely not their best and highest use, and I imagine it’s not for really any business owner. I mean, a lot of times I think business owners end up being the main operator in their business as opposed to being an owner of the business and focusing on things that are going to drive the business forward and make the business more valuable. I think a lot of times with any business that ends up happening, and that’s really what we are teaching people at Lawyerist, is how to become an owner of your business and not so much be an operator in the day-to-day grind of the business. 

  

Zack Glaser (31:05): 

Okay. So last question. I like to get practical if I can. What would you say to an attorney who comes to you? What’s the first step they can take to stepping out of being an operator of their business and becoming an owner of their business? What would you say they do? First today, 

  

Chad Fox (31:25): 

If I was speaking to a lawyer, they came to me with that question, the first thing I would tell them to do is they need to find someone, a manager for their business. That can be the person that can take their ideas and get them done, put them into action and make sure that stuff gets done. And speaking to the lawyers that I’ve spoken to since I’ve started working with Lawyerist, I hear a lot of similar themes, which is I have all these ideas, especially from solopreneur, lawyers, that I have all these ideas and I just can’t get to them all. And so you have somebody that has all these things they want to do with their business, but because they’re just one person, they’re not getting to any of it. The day-to-Day, the practicing law, the things that go into just bringing money into the business, all that stuff takes priority. But if you find that person, that manager that almost like the COO of your law firm, maybe you don’t want to use that term, but that person is going to be the one that’s going to take your ideas, get ’em done, then you can focus more on operating the business as opposed to working on the day-to-day grind. 

  

Zack Glaser (32:38): 

Yeah. Well, Chad, the answer I was looking for was to buy the small firm roadmap where you can go to Lawyerist dot com slash book and you can actually download the first chapter today. And you’ll hear me say that in the outro of this. No, I think that was a much better answer. Chat of get somebody that is helping you with operations, or if you’re the operations person, get a visionary, get a person that is really thinking about where the firm is going, and that jives and clicks right into how we advise people to operate in the small firm roadmap at the website in our coaching processes and all of that. 

  

Chad Fox (33:22): 

Yeah, that’s a great point, Zach, where you had mentioned about the owner of the business might not necessarily be the visionary of the business. They might have more of an operator manager get stuff done kind of mindset. And so just because you’re the owner of the business doesn’t automatically make you the CEO doesn’t automatically make you the visionary in the business. Maybe that’s not where your strength lies. And so maybe to your point, what you need is somebody that could compliment you and be more of the visionary so that you can focus more on the operations. 

  

Zack Glaser (33:56): 

That’s a good point. Sometimes I get caught up in what I see as getting the attorney out of the operations and whatnot, but what we’re talking about is just running a healthy firm, and part of that is if you want to be the person who is doing the day-to-day operation, you can 

  

Chad Fox (34:11): 

Yep. Right people, right seats. 

  

Zack Glaser (34:13): 

Yeah. Yep, yep. Right people, right seats. But you need the other right people as well. 

  

Chad Fox (34:17): 

Yeah, for sure. 

  

Zack Glaser (34:19): 

Chad, it’s a pleasure to talk to you today. It is always good to pick your brain on many things like I do throughout the day. I appreciate you being a new part of our team, and I look forward to all the people you’re going to help and all the conversations we’re going to have that are like 

  

Chad Fox (34:34): 

This. Thank you, Zack. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me today. 

 

 

Announcer: 

The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First. If you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, are right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab to schedule a 10-minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

 

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