Planning for Profit

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Un-Billable Hour
Planning for Profit
06/12/2019

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Intro: Managing your law practice can be challenging. Marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable. Welcome to this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. This is where you will get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson, here on Legal Talk Network.

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Christopher T. Anderson: Welcome to The Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast helping attorneys achieve more success. We are glad you can listen today on Legal Talk Network.

Today’s episode is about financials, numbers, metrics, it’s funny. I speak to lawyers around the country and I constantly am hearing the same thing every, every event I go to. I went to law school so I didn’t have to do math or something to that effect.

Here we are putting together as lawyers, we’re putting together business transactions, closing home sales, we’re calculating personal injury settlements, figuring out child support etc, etc, etc. all stuff that involves numbers and math and we’re perfectly comfortable with those things when they’re in our practice, and we manage to do them well.

But then when it comes to our own financials one of two things happens. One, mathophobia, we just don’t look or don’t look deeply enough to get any real understanding from our numbers, understanding that would help us make better decisions for our business or two, we believe the only way to understand our numbers is to do the books ourselves.

We’ll talk a lot more about this as we have before on other episodes about not doing certain things in our businesses, not doing things of lower value and we should be doing things of higher value, but for this purpose, it’s just we do them ourselves and the problem with both situations is the law firm owner is not being well served in either A, understanding where she is today, or B, making and adhering us to a solid plan for where she wants to go.

So our title today is “Planning for Profit”. My guest today is Ron Saharyan. Ron is the Co-Founder of Profit First Professionals with Mike Michalowicz, who is the author of the best-selling book ‘Profit First’. Ron is the Managing Partner of Profit First Professionals which is an organization of professionals including accountants, bookkeepers, coaches and more who help small business owners plan for, adhere to, and see their profits making them real.

Ron is a thought leader in business, cash flow management and speaker on the topic of small business profit.

And of course, I am your host Christopher Anderson. I am an attorney with a singular passion for helping other lawyers achieve success with their law firm businesses.

In The Un-Billable Hour each month, we explore an area important to help you be a more profitable lawyer, through growing your revenues, getting back more of your time and/or getting more professional satisfaction from your business.

The Un-Billable Hour is dedicated to bringing new guests each month to help you learn more about how to make your law firm business work for you, instead of the other way around.

Before we get started, I also want to say a thank you to our sponsors; Answer 1, Solo Practice University, Scorpion and LAWCLERK.

Answer 1 is a leading virtual receptionist and answering services provider for lawyers. You can find out more by giving them a call at 800-answer1, or online at www.answer1.com. And that is www.answer1.com.

Solo Practice University is a great resource for solos, no matter how long you have been practicing. Make sure you check out solopracticeuniversity.com and learn how to run your practice better.

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And once again, today’s episode of The Un-Billable Hour is “Planning for Profit”. My guest is Ron Saharyan, the Co-Founder of Profit First Professionals and overall small business profit guru.

Ron, welcome to The Un-Billable Hour.

Ron Saharyan: Thank you, Christopher. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and connect with your audience. I am very excited about this episode today, because profit is a beautiful thing.

(00:04:58)

Christopher T. Anderson: It is, and it’s a tradition with The Un-Billable Hour that I am not very good at giving a full introduction.

So Ron, if you don’t mind just to get us kicked off, what got you involved in helping businesses to improve their profits and get more focused on profitability?

Ron Saharyan: Right. Well so the issue out there is that business owners are not paying themselves first. They don’t have money for Uncle Sam and they certainly don’t have a front window approach to cash flow management and they have a lot of debt and they aren’t even turning a profit. And that’s bad considering that the United States is built upon small businesses.

My whole thing for starting this with Mike is if we can help small businesses, one, pay themselves first, if not a little bit more. Two, create a war chest of cash for Uncle Sam regardless of what the business owners tax liabilities are. Three, a focus on profit. Even if that profit is 3%-3.5%, business owners can begin to pay down their debt. They could celebrate the health of the company or they can hire when small business owners can hire people have jobs, when people have jobs that relieves a lot of the stress from their home life.

So Mike and I set out on this mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and you mentioned debt and one of the things that like struck me — that one of the first times I met you, was the things that you know but you haven’t heard articulated and you said something that I knew, but I had never heard articulated before, which is you could only pay off debt with profit. It’s the only tool available you’ve got to pay off debt. And it just sort of lit a light in my brain that I hadn’t really thought about before, so thank you for that.

Ron Saharyan: Yeah, no, no, we consider if you have debt you’re not profitable. Maybe you can do some sort of accounting and make it look profitable but at the end of the day, you’re really not because you have that liability.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yes. So as we roll into this show, I want to make clear from the get-go, you don’t work exclusively with law firms, right?

Ron Saharyan: No, not at all. Profit First is a cash flow methodology. The domain of the entrepreneur is irrelevant. We’re in probably 17 to 20 different countries. Mike’s book ‘Profit First’ has been translated in just as many languages and the entrepreneurial struggle from country to country to country is the same. And so, this is an accounting, this is not tax, it’s cash flow management and it’s applicable absolutely in law firms and every other type of business out there.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah cool. Well the good news is that although a lot of law firm owners out there in the world are still warming up to the fact that they actually opened up a small business, here on The Un-Billable Hour, most of my listeners have come squarely to that realization. So I think they know that we’re talking to them as entrepreneurs, but let me just ask you to your knowledge, do the people that work with Profit First Professionals and help these small businesses, do they also work with small law firms as clients?

Ron Saharyan: Oh absolutely. Many of our members solely work with law firms. It’s their niche specialization or niche specialization, so a certified Profit First Professional is skilled to work in any type of client and yes, absolutely there’s lots of law firms out there that have implemented Profit First whether it’s a startup or a $50 million law firm.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, totally appreciate that. And that’s why one of the things I do want to hit since we are talking to lawyers mostly here on The Un-Billable Hour is that our listeners that we’ve said the words priority 20, 25 times, it can’t miss the fact that Mike’s book is called Profit First and your organization is called Profit First Professionals.

We keep saying that terminology, profit first, that’s the theme. So let’s start with that one. I want you to talk about, if you don’t mind, what does it mean and particularly in the context that of the listeners of The Un-Billable Hour are going to be concerned about putting profit before their clients.

Ron Saharyan: Sure. Absolutely. So to answer that properly let me take it back a little bit and the audience back a little bit. We’ve been taught over the years a formula, a formula on how to run the finances in our business. Everybody who is listening to this podcast or hears us they’ve been taught sales minus expenses equal profit, right?

You sell, sell, sell, occur expense and whatever you have left over is profit. Well with profit, you can be philanthropic; with profit, you can pay down your debt; with profit, you can hire. So why is profit the afterthought? Usually things that are the afterthought are less desirable.

So while logic the sales minus expenses equal profit, structurally, logically, it makes sense; but behaviorally, it’s incorrect.

So the Profit First overarching strategy or formula, the correct formula, so put a big X over that S-E = P. It’s sales minus profit equal expenses.

(00:10:04)

Sell, sell, sell, take your profit and run your business on what you have left over.

So now profit, let’s dig into that a little bit more. When we say profit, we’re not just talking about the profit, we’re saying owner’s pay, tax reserves and profit. Those are the three primary components that we’re utilizing to justify this word profit. So under this formula, sales minus owner’s pay first, profit first, tax first, then manage the business on what you have left over.

Christopher T. Anderson: Cool, and I can see how that can — I mean, it’s just — it’s just a different way of thinking about it, because at first like the amount that you take home, the amount that’s the owner’s comp, the amount that you pay in taxes, when you think about it your way or you think about it the old way, it could be the same amounts, but there’s a definite level of security that comes from securing the owner’s pay and the taxes beforehand so that you know you have those.

Ron Saharyan: Right. Absolutely and profit isn’t a bad thing, it’s people that use their profits for bad things, right, and so, but look at it this way. When you’re playing kickball as a kid and you know the last kid that’s picked they’re an undesirable.

When we put profit last behaviorally we’re saying it’s an undesirable, it’s a leftover, it’s not important and that’s why so many businesses, law firms as well, sell, sell, sell occur, occur, occur, expense, and then they have no profit leftover, because they’re spending all of the money. That’s why you’ll work with some of your members that say hey, I’m a five million dollar company but I’m still not making any more money myself. Well yeah, because there’s a natural tendency for us to exhaust all the resources that are available to us in any given point in time. It’s called Parkinson’s Law, not to be confused with Parkinson’s disease.

So by removing your owner’s pay, your tax and your profit, you’re putting guardrails in place for that money that’s already been earmarked for a specific purpose. Okay, you move that to the side. Now you’re running it with what’s left over. So you have those resources available to you and those are the resources that you can use. You’ve already allocated your pay, your tax, your profit over to the side. It’s out of the way. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it. Manage the firm on what you have left over.

Christopher T. Anderson: Which is what lawyers have to do anyway even before they do this, right, there’s always — there’s not an infinite pile. So they’re always managing with what they have got, but this is making it clearer and it really make you a more mature way of looking at it, by making it clear that this is what you’ve got to run the business, figure it out.

We’re talking with Ron Saharyan, the co-founder of Profit First Professionals about profit first and we’ve spent some time talking about what it means, what the methodology, what the terminology Profit First means.

We are going to hear from our sponsors right now then I am going to come back and I am going ask Ron to talk to us about how putting profit first actually helps law firm owners be more focused on the client’s needs right after this message.

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Christopher T. Anderson: We are back with The Un-Billable Hour, and I am talking to Ron Saharyan, the co-founder of Profit First Professionals, and we have been talking about what profit first means. When we are going to come back from the break, I wanted Ron to talk about something that I know, our listeners are — like top of their mind right now, because if they’re hearing this, this profit first thing, it sounds pretty cool, securing owners pay first, making sure that IRS is covered first.

What else Ron, does using the Profit First methodology, using, securing these monies first, how does that help these owners, the law firm owners and other business owners, but we’re going to talk about law firms right now be more focused on their client’s needs.

(00:14:58)

Ron Saharyan: Well, I don’t want to work with a law firm where the owner is up 24 hours a day just so we can get some billable timing, okay and make his payments. So working with a law firm owner who is consistently paying themselves and gets a good night’s sleep is a value add to me, right.

The other thing is, is that another value by add, you can add another component in that P for the profit. My recommendation and I know that Christopher also agrees with this let’s put reserve, some of that money for marketing activities, marketing, marketing, marketing, right. That’s how you build your business and a lot of law firms need to have a marketing budget and this is an opportunity to allocate money into a specific account for the purpose of only marketing.

Now the beauty of this too is you can easily see where the money is going and then you can measure a return on it. If the return on that marketing activity is awesome, we’ll double down on it. If it’s not, correct and maybe go down a different avenue. But if you set aside a small percentage, okay, of monthly revenue or bimonthly revenue into a specific marketing account, well you know over the course of the year you’ll be building up funds and you’ll be able to be flushed with money for your marketing activities.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and then since like you’ve talked about earlier, you said and then after you set aside the profit and the owner’s comp, the tax reserve and this marketing fund, you’ve got to set pile of money that you’d now run the business on. So you’re less and you’re used to running the business on that and you’re less tempted to go raid the marketing fund or cut the marketing budget which is what a lot of law firms do when they have a cash crunch, because it’s already been set aside and they know how to spend it.

Well I wanted to come back to you because I think it was a really interesting comment because you are a consumer of legal services from time to time, we all are, but you said, I don’t want to work with a law firm or a lawyer that’s staying up all night. And I think that’s just a really key point is that if you don’t secure your profit, if you don’t secure your owner’s comp, you’ve got a lot of law firm owners out there who instead of thinking about their clients problems are worried about making the rent payment, worried about paying their mortgage, worried about how much they owe Uncle Sam. That is not fully disclosed by them and that — how does setting this aside upfront avoid those kinds of problems?

Ron Saharyan: Yeah, so — I do a lot of work with the accountants and now tax season we’re just coming out of it and many of them are running ragged and you know again the same principle. I don’t want the accountant that’s been up all night doing my taxes, chances are they’re going to make an error, chances are they’re not going to be as consultative to me, for me, for my benefit as maybe they should.

The same thing applies to a law firm and I’m not necessarily looking for my father’s lawyer, I’m looking for expertise. I’m looking for a lawyer that’s going to partner with me. The accountants that we work with are also looking for the same, and so by having a lawyer have a fine-tuned financial foundation, a cash flow methodology that is a front window approach, a path, a blueprint for them to pay themselves first, to have money for Uncle Sam, for marketing, for profit, for hiring. They can focus on their craft. They could focus on it.

When lawyers are focused on their craft, I know I’m going to get a much better service.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah fine — when they’re focused on you and not their own problems.

Ron Saharyan: Yeah, they just don’t want to do the deal to do the deal, right?

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, that’s another. Oh, we didn’t even go there like how many lawyers are — when you’re under pressure are you really focused on the best settlement in a personal injury suit or you have focused on making sure it gets done by the end of the month.

I mean Profit First really eliminates a lot of distractions and a lot of issues for law firms. What I’d like to do Ron, is just turn our attention now, because we mentioned it first, partner in Profit First Professional Mike Michalowicz, wrote the book ‘Profit First’.

In your opinion could a law firm owner read Profit First and implement the recommendations, the methodology all by herself.

Ron Saharyan:  Sure. Anybody can read any book and try to apply the principles, but there’s a difference between reading a book, watching a PowerPoint presentation or a webinar. There’s a lot different. That’s more tacit knowledge, okay, and what our members have is explicit knowledge. I know that I’m going to get a much better education if I instead of reading a book on how to play golf, I actually get to play around the golf with Tiger Woods. So the book itself is very good, my experience is everybody gets stuck because it’s not as simple and the thing about things that are conceptually simple and that really simple, the Devils are always in the details.

(00:20:02)

So while it is conceptually simple, anybody can take a predetermined percentage of money and allocate it into a bank account for a purpose, that’s simple. But are you going to do it?

The other analogy that I like to use is yes, you can go to the gym and buy a gym member, right Christopher, $29 a month and we go. Maybe we will go, maybe we’re feeling low under weather, maybe we won’t go. But by working with somebody that is certified, that’s an advisor that has been through a Profit First curriculum, they are the personal trainers.

I know if I go to the gym with a personal trainer, yeah, I’m going to get the results faster, more efficient and I’m going to be more comfortable. So while I can go to the gym by myself, I rather do it with somebody that’s been properly trained so I can get the results faster and I don’t mind paying for it.

If I’m paying a premium for products and services, I’m going to make sure that works, paying $29 for the month, yeah, not a big deal if I don’t do it. But if I’m paying $1,500 for the month, chances are I’m more inclined to really go.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. You’re paying for it and you’ve got someone else holding you accountable, like the results are not inside your own head, that you’re being accountable to your trainer, to your bookkeeper in this case, to be doing the steps and doing the things that you know.

I mean I love the gym example, Ron, because we all know when we join a gym that being a member and actually going and lifting the weights or running on the treadmill or whatever, the results are good for us. They will make us better, they’ll make us healthier. So there’s no question that it’s good for us, just like I don’t think there’s really a question that putting Profit First is good for you. But all the other stuff in life that happens, well maybe it’s not convenient to do the — to put my money to the side today, maybe it’s not convenient to go to the gym today. But I’ll tell you, I’ve been there, no matter how many months in a row you send your membership payment to the gym, you just don’t get fitter until you go.

Ron Saharyan: Right, absolutely. So while yes, people can do it and I encourage people to do it, but also do we — should a lawyer really be doing their own accounting or bookkeeping, is the same thing applies to a guy like me, should I really go to LegalZoom and download an operator’s agreement and just sign it and give it to my partner.

No, there are certain things that you want to stay in your lane with regards to and accounting and bookkeeping, again, it’s something that I really feel is a positive investment in the right person. The ideal bookkeeper in accounting is not going to be seen as an expense but as a strategic investment.

And if you’re not getting the strategic advice, well then the chances are you probably need a new accountant or bookkeeper.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. And I see that point, you just mentioned something that kind of triggered my thought for something I said very early in this show, which is what about for lawyers who for lack of a better word are numbers phobic or mathophobic. How does Profit for like — is Profit First something that is easy for them to comprehend or is this just another level of accounting, that’s going to complicate matters for them?

Ron Saharyan: Easily able to understand. I’ll break it down in its simplest terms. Profit First is a cash flow methodology, it’s a behavioral methodology, very much like grandmother’s envelope budgeting methodologies that came added the depression. The story with that, if your listeners aren’t aware, is an example, my mother — my grandmother, my mother, Mike’s grandmother, whenever they would get a little bit of money, they would put a little bit of that money into specific envelopes.

The envelopes that my grandmother use rent food, clothing, Church, okay, right. I need to say she got a dollar, she would put a quarter in each one of those accounts. When she went to the food store, she didn’t bring all four of those envelopes, she just brought the food account, right, that’s the money that she had to spend on food, okay.

Now, if she brought all of the envelopes, maybe she wouldn’t be as creative, maybe she would buy the London broil instead of the flank steak or maybe she would buy more branded stuff versus generic stuff, okay. But by having less resources, we are more creative, we are more inventive and we make the money last longer.

So by implementing Profit First, what you’re doing is you’re creating envelopes such as owner’s pay, tax, profit and you have your – whatever is left over is what you’re running the business on.

(00:24:56)

For my grandmother, whatever was leftover maybe that was for a movie ticket or something else right and so, by allocating your money in a timely fashion as well as putting up guardrails, you’ll be more in tune with your cash flow, you’ll be more secure and have clarity of where your money is going. With this relief, with this clarity comes focus.

When a lawyer is focused on their craft and they’re paying themselves and everything else and their financials are taken care of, they’re going to be a rock star.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah and what just jumps to my mind when you’re saying that also is the clarity going back to grandma, right. If week after week, I’m not able to buy the food that I want and I’m trying very hard to run my family on the money that’s there, but week after week, I’ve been very clear I want to put this much money away for church like you said, I want to put this much money away for rent and I’ve got this much for food but I’m not able to buy the food I want.

Then one of the clarity says, you know what we need more money, like we need to figure out a way to bring more money in, because I’m not going to steal from the church and I’m not going to steal from rent and then now bringing it back to Profit First, right, the lawyer because this is what lawyers do.

I’m not going to steal from my family, I’m not going to steal from my profits, I’m not going to steal from my salary, I’m going to have to grow up, put on my big boy pants and bring in more money because the business wants more money and I’m not stealing from the other accounts, and I think that’s a huge clarity that it brings as well.

Ron Saharyan: Additionally, to piggybacking on that Chris, most people, the most business owners, their first reaction is to cut expenses and I get it. My first reaction is to do a rate increase, a small incremental 1-3% marginal increase across the board, that will do wonders for the business, maybe there’s special service offerings, maybe there’s replication, maybe there’s other avenues, maybe you can even improve your collections, improving your collections to get the cash flow in time faster makes a lot of difference.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, so we’re going to take a break here Ron. We are talking with Ron Saharyan; the Co-Founder of Profit First Professionals and we just went into another area that I want to explore where we’re talking about how to use Profit First to change your thinking around like rate increases like Ron said, I was just talking about making sure you bring in more money.

I’m going to ask Ron about what it means to actually be a value-based professional and use this Profit First mindset to improve your business, but first, we’re going to hear from our sponsors.

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Christopher T. Anderson: And we’re still talking with Ron Saharyan; Co-Founder of Profit First Professionals and before the break, we started to talk about how Profit First can really help you all up until that part of the conversation we were talking about how it can make it clearer, how the business can – you could be more secure and setting aside your pay.

And now we started talking about how it can actually help you grow your business and rethink your business. So Ron, you were just talking about rate increases. What else — well let’s just go with the question I started with, which is what does it mean for a lawyer or any other professional, but let’s stick to lawyers to be a value based professional in using Profit First.

Ron Saharyan: Yeah, awesome. So offering value is something that all business owners are looking for. With regards to the accounting industry and the legal industry, over the past 25 to even maybe 50 years, both industries have been commoditized to the point where hey anybody could yeah do taxes, so let’s just get the cheapest person. Hey, there’s a lawyer on every block, why don’t I just get any lawyer as long as he’s passed this test and he’s not in jail and I can afford him, right.

But what being a value based professional is going above and beyond the compliance, okay, it’s providing advisory services for the law firm, maybe it’s being more of a quarterback because the lawyers in there are in the very best position to influence what a business owner is doing.

(00:30:05)

By partnering up with a Profit First Professional, you have two advisors right there. Then maybe partnering up with a banker, maybe partnering up with a marketing company and being able to look at the business, okay, if you’re a business lawyer looking at the business in its totality, not just what legal opportunity do they have but how can I advise this customer to run a healthier business and I always — I tell the story of my grandfather and his accountant.

As a kid growing up, I see my grandfather and the accountant, but the accountant was his bookkeeper. He was his tax man. He was his financial sounding board, he was say, no, you know what, you really shouldn’t open up that line of business, no really you can’t afford that person.

Yes, let’s go ahead and do this. I did the return. I measured, it’s awesome. Well, those kind of conversations stop happening. This is an opportunity for a lawyer, for an accountant to have a different type of conversation and it all starts — I love asking this question, may I have your permission to ask you personal questions about your business?

I got that from a buddy ed class, and that really opens things up. So it’s not, hey how do you want to handle this or how many bank accounts you have or what software you are at, it’s how did the business perform. Did you achieve what you wanted to? What do you want to improve on? What do you want to reduce? What do you want to capitalize on? You want more market share? Do you want to reduce complaints? Do you have the systems and processes in place for you to achieve what you want?

And so, having deeper type of conversations and asking better questions is going to open up so many opportunities for the lawyer to be more consultative in their approach then to have a Rolodex okay, or whatever a black, not even a BlackBerry right, geese, I’m dating myself again, but a smartphone that has a team of professionals on speed dial.

So Christopher, if you call me up and say hey Ron I need a banker. I put you in touch with the banker that I know. He’s on my phone, okay. You need a financial adviser. Here’s Jerry Lynch. You need an accountant, here’s Karen Dellaripa. And so, I have these advisers that are in my pocket in a positive way that I used to collaborate with my customers on, and that’s really how you become the transformative law professional, not just a compliance type of law professional.

Christopher T. Anderson: This is really mind-blowing. So this is using this profit, the clarity that you get by engaging Profit First, using this Profit First mindset. You said raise your rates, but what you’re talking about now is actually deepening your relationship too, like really seeing yourself as a more holistic relationship with your clients and using your professionals, having your accountant and your bookkeeper also have a deeper relationship with you because you should be deriving value from that relationship just like you are giving value to your clients and this all comes out of really — I think this — I think the word is entrepreneurial maturity that comes out of seeing your numbers more clearly through the Profit First cash flow methodology that you’re talking about.

Ron Saharyan: Well, look at this way. I put lawyers on a pedestal. Every entrepreneur does. We put lawyers on a pedestal. So if a lawyer is going to recommend that I need a different bookkeeper, I’m going to look into that. If a lawyer recommends that maybe I should take a deeper look into some sort of legal processes or handbooks, I’m going to do it, right?

So we don’t necessarily want to know what books the lawyers are reading, we want to know what are you doing in your business to live this lifestyle that you have. And for them to say, hey, this is how I — hey Ron, would you like to learn how to pay yourself consistently? Heck yeah. Hey Ron, would you be interested in knowing the methodology that my law firm utilizes to pay down their debt? Would you be interested in that? Heck yeah, and that’s what Profit First can open the door for.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. So Ron let me ask you to wrap up, I want to ask you one last question. I’ve heard you talk about and write about before the need for business owners including law firm owners to take and accept a 100% responsibility for the success and failure of their company and their life. I’d like you to just say if you don’t mind just talk for a minute about what does that mean in the context of business financial planning and execution, in the context of Profit First?

Ron Saharyan: Sure. It all comes down to walking the walk, okay. If I’m going to join an organization, if I’m going to invest in a service or personal development, it’s my responsibility to get the most out of it.

(00:35:02)

Anything else is an excuse of why you’re not be seen successful. You need to take personal responsibility for the success or failure of your business, of your employees, of your company. It really does. And here’s the thing.

When you take personal responsibility in your company, in your life, and you look to do it just 1% better than what others expect of you, again, you’re going to be that rock star. And to say that a service, a marketing service okay for example, oh, I didn’t get the return on that. Well, did I really do everything that they suggested? Was it well-thought-out or did I just basically say here’s $100,000, make me 200, right? What is your involvement?

If our members that apply and then are selected to be Profit First Professionals, if they’re not showing up to the game that’s their fault. They’re going to come back to me and they’re going to say you know what Ron, I’m not getting any value out of this relationship, and I’m going to say no crap. You bought a gym membership but you decided not to go to the gym.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah.

Ron Saharyan: Right. So take responsibility for the absolute success or failure of what you have going on.

Christopher T. Anderson: Fantastic. Thank you. And that does wrap up this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. Our guest today has been Ron Saharyan, the Co-Founder of Profit First Professionals, and Ron, we have covered a lot of ground today and we didn’t go nearly as deep as we could, but we also didn’t take 12 hours.

So if people want to learn more about Profit First Professionals or ‘Profit First’, the book or just ask you another question that we didn’t cover, what’s a great place for them to be able to reach you?

Ron Saharyan: Awesome. Yeah, so you can always go to www.profitfirstprofessionals.com. There you will see, you can become one, you can find one, but also my email address is [email protected]. If you’re interested and would like to receive a PDF of the core couple of chapters, send me an email, I would be more than happy to gift your audience a copy.

Christopher T. Anderson: That’s really kind of you. Thanks Ron. All right. This is Christopher Anderson and I look forward to seeing you next month with another great guest as we learn more about topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you.

Remember, you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you again soon.

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