When It’s Time To Produce, It’s About Your Team: Who’s Running The Show?

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

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’ll get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson here on Legal Talk Network.

Christopher T. Anderson: Welcome to the Un-Billable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson, and today’s episode, it’s about a lot of things. It’s about your firm. It’s about growing your firm. It’s about what you can achieve with your firm. Why I’m kind of hedging a little bit. You’ll understand in a second when you meet our guest. But I’m going to call this show being about your team because we’ve just gotten off of doing two or three episodes about acquisition, about new clients, about marketing and about sales. And people love those shows. But really time comes when it’s time to deliver, and it’s really important to really grow your business. It’s not about the marketing as much as it is about the team because you got to deliver. So the show is about production mostly, but in a sense, we’re going to touch on everything because your team, after all, touches on every part of your business. You need to know who they are and who you’ve brought in to be. That such a big part of your business.

In the main triangle, as you will remember, of what it is that a law firm business must do. We got to acquire new clients. We got to produce the results that we promised production. That’s what this show is about. And of course, we have to achieve the business and professional results for us, the owners. In the center of that triangle, of course, is you driving it all, for better or worse. And that’s why you’re listening to this show. So in today’s episode, we’re going to discuss understanding your employees and finding employees you need to build and grow your business to wherever you want it to go. And Luis Scott, who is my guest today, has some pretty distinct ideas about where you might want to grow your business because he’s the owner and managing partner of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers and also of 8 Figure Firm Consulting.

And so we’re going to call today’s episode of The Un-Billable Hour, who’s running the show? And I’m pleased, very pleased to introduce my guest, Luis Scott. He’s again the owner and managing partner of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, owner of 8 Figure Firm Consulting, where he helps legal professionals to optimize and grow their practices. He’s got over 20 years of experience in the legal industry, including as the managing partner of his successful law firm. He’s also the host of The Guts and Glory Show, which, if you have time, when you’re not listening to the Un-Billable Hour, you can check out that show. And he’s also the author of ‘The King of Growth: How to Dominate Your Market, Increase Predictability and Unleash the Power of Your Law Firm for Personal and Financial Freedom’. That’s a heck of a title, Luis. He helps entrepreneurs to maximize the greatness to build the company of their dreams. So, Luis, with that introduction, welcome to the show.

Luis Scott: Wow. That was amazing. Thank you so much, Christopher. I’m glad to be here.

Christopher T. Anderson: Not at all. It’s my pleasure to have you here. So let’s just start with the, I think, most important question so that the audience knows who they’re listening to. Tell us about your firm. You said you’re the managing partner. You’ve built this firm up. Tell us a little bit about that, what you do in the firm, and why it is that you like to share that with other law firm owners.

Luis Scott: Yeah, absolutely. The law firm is, in its current iteration, has been around 14 years. I have been a part of it for five years. I was a managing partner of a previous firm, and my current business partner was a friend of mine. And when I left my previous firm, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and said, “why don’t we join together?” At the time, I had a new law firm, I had left my firm, started my own firm, and I just wanted to run a law firm. That was my passion, was business, not so much being the lawyer. I really, really enjoyed running the law firm.

And so, we joined forces together, and we took the firm from about 23 employees to now about 150 employees. If you count contractors that work for us, it’s about 170 who work for us now. And we grew the revenue substantially, too. We went from about 4 or 5 million to around 40 million in revenue this year. So it’s been an amazing ride over the last five years. We help people in personal injury and workers’ comp, and we’re based out of Atlanta. And so very competitive market, not only for client acquisition, but also for employee acquisition. So it’s something that I’m very passionate about.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. And that’s become sort of the thing, right? And it’s a new thing for law that since really the pandemic, listen, getting good, great talent has always been challenging and competitive, but now getting any talent has become challenging and competitive. But let me just go back, though, before we get into that, because that’s obviously what I want to talk about, but I think it’s important that the listeners understand.

(00:05:02)

Okay, great. You’ve grown it from a couple dozen to darn near 200 people, $25 million. Aren’t your hands full? Why are you sharing this? What’s the compulsion to share this with other lawyers and to have this whole eight-figure law firm business while you’re busy growing your business? Or are you done? Is it as big as it’s ever going to be and you’re done growing that?

Luis Scott: Oh, it’s definitely not as big as it’s going to be. I mean, we have a 20-year plan. We’ve carved out a 5, 10 and 20-year plan. They always say have big dreams and we do have the dream of a nine-figure business one day and then beyond that if I have enough life to make that a reality. But what really drove this decision was that I found myself without much to do. Because when you grow your business and you spend your time with people developing leaders, leaders take over the business and they start running the business. And when they start running the business, you find yourself, like I did, with about three to five hours of work a week. Now, some people would say, what a dream. Three to five hours a week. But if you’re a true ambitious entrepreneur, that is not a dream, that’s a nightmare. We have nothing to do. Retirement to me is not a thing that I look forward to. I look forward to constantly creating and making an impact.

In fact, my personal vision statement was to lead a life of significance. So when I found myself with three to five hours of work a week, I said I need to do something. And my love for teaching and my passion for seeing other people succeed drove me to develop our system on how to grow and scale law firms because I wanted to see that for other people.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One thing I see oftentimes, actually, when someone gets some level of success in developing leaders in their business and reducing their workload and they get bored and they start to break the business because they can’t keep their hands off it and they want to stay busy. So it looks like you found a more positive and productive outlet. Now, the lessons. Listen, let’s face it, you’ve grown this business to the size it is. And I think the listeners are going to be asking this question too, because I introduced it as the Bader Scott Injury Lawyers. And so, as they’re listening so that they don’t tune out, can you answer the question of is your formula for growth is what you can teach? What we’re going to talk about today, is that really just for injury law firms or is it more broadly?

Luis Scott: Absolutely not. The 8 Figure Firm Consulting has a mission to help 100 law firms develop eight figures in predictable revenue. And we can get into why I chose that number, but we are seeing people in all practice areas achieve this. Last year, I had a family law firm who got to 10 million in revenue. I have an immigration law firm who is going to do 12 million in revenue this year. I have a Medicaid and estate planning law firm who’s going to do eight figures in revenue this year.

So this is for anyone who has the ambition level and the drive to get through the most difficult part of scaling a business which is the $3 to $8 million range. That’s where I think it gets really tough, because that’s where you have to be really good at hiring people. And then at 8 million, you have to get really good at developing leaders. And so, if you’re willing to go through that, you can hit eight figures. And it doesn’t really matter the practice area.

Christopher T. Anderson: Let’s dig in there a little bit, because I said it was going to be about hiring, and you just said the hardest part, right? And I agree with you. Having gone through that journey more than once, that is where you stumble. Right? But I like to hear you talk about, I was about to just start ranting, but I’m the host, not the guest.

So you rant on what happens. So you said three to eight. Right? So at 3 million, the founders, the owners, kind of doing the jobs, right? So what happens on that journey from three to eight? Who do they have to hire? And if you can, in what order to get through that journey? Why is it so hard?

Luis Scott: Yeah, you asked me, like, the toughest question is what order? And I have a philosophy, I’ll answer that question first. I have a philosophy that you build your business based on the personnel that’s available at the time that you need to hire people. And so you may find yourself in a position where you need to hire five positions, but the order depends on the availability of the personnel. Sometimes you need a Director of Ops, but the only thing available is your HR person. Well, I needed both, so let me go ahead and hire the HR person.

And so, we get stuck in like, I need a Director of Ops. I need a Director of Ops. And then we completely discard everything else that needs to be hired because it wasn’t the order that we wanted. So I think that my philosophy is you hire based on the personnel that’s available at the time that you need them. And since we always need at 3 million multiple positions at one time, you’re just hiring as they become available. So that’s kind of my idea when it comes to that. But what happens at 3 million is at 3 million, you get to a point where you believe that this is easy. You go, I got to 3 million. This is easy, I’m going to duplicate this.

(00:10:02)

And so, what ends up happening is you try to duplicate a $3 million business with your own effort. And what you’ll realize is you can’t duplicate 3 million. You can’t just stack 3 million on 3 million. I always say eight figures is not stacking seven one figure businesses. You can’t do that.

And so, what happens at 3 million is you realize that your capacity as an individual to be a generalist, which is involved in every part of the business, is basically tapping out. And so you have to start hiring somebody to lead your marketing. Start hiring even if it’s at a lower level, someone to lead sales. Start hiring someone to lead operations because you get tapped out. Your failure to do that, you’ll still grow, probably, maybe, we don’t know, right? You could grow if you have a little bit more capacity, but your failure to start hiring those lead positions will then stump your growth. And that’s where I see a lot of people plateau.

Most people plateau if they’re highly ambitious, willing to work hard, they’re going to plateau around 5 or 6 million before they realize, I’m going to be here for 15 years if I don’t start hiring some leaders. So that’s what happens between three and eight is they need to start hiring people to oversee primary parts of the business.

Christopher T. Anderson: And I think just because a lot of our listeners would probably be seeing this happen in their businesses. Describe what it is like to plateau at three to six without hiring those positions. What is it like for the owner?

Luis Scott: It’s an absolute nightmare. I mean, you’re going to be working 50 to 70 hours a week, probably, and you are going to feel like, I can’t hire good people. You’re going to feel like people don’t stay. There’s going to be kind of like this negative toxic energy that you’re going to sense at all times. What I hear, and this is just from coaching people in that area, I’ve had two law firms that I’ve worked with that have been in that range for 10 or more years, and what they tell me is they’re losing the enthusiasm to keep growing. They’re losing the enthusiasm to bring on new people. Maybe this is just life, the grind forever. And I think that that’s a terrible place to be because there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s not at 3 to 5 million. It’s beyond that when you can hire and afford real leaders. And so, it’s a very difficult place to be because you feel alone. You don’t feel like anybody understands you. And you’re putting in a ton of time and energy at that time because right at that moment, you’re still a generalist where you’re like, overseeing everything. So you really have just a job.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. So what do you say to those, though, that are in there, particularly like, the 3 to 5 million area. You just said they know or have a sense that they need a COO, probably going to need a CFO. They need a law firm administrator. They need a sales manager. They need a marketing person. And they’re looking at that going like, you just rattled off a million dollars of overhead and I don’t have a spare million dollars kicking around or even I’m not bringing home a million that this business isn’t producing a million of profit. How in the hell do I do that? How do I bring on all these people to bridge that gap when I don’t see that profit?

Luis Scott: I think the answer is staggering hiring and making sure that you have a good plan for when you’re going to try to hire certain people. And again, not to go back on what I said about building the business based on the personnel that’s available, but you have to put a plan together and say, these are the five positions that I need. And as these positions become available, I’m going to hire them. And the most important position to hire is positions where the person’s skill set is different or complementary to yours. Don’t hire people that do what you do well. If you’re really good at sales, no matter how much you hate sales, if you’re good at it, don’t hire a salesperson. Hire somebody to do the lawyer work. If you’re great at doing the lawyer work, but not good at sales, hire a salesperson and a lot of people hire the position for the work they don’t want to do instead of hiring for the position that they’re not good at. And those are two different things. Like if you’re good at it, just because you don’t want to do it isn’t the reason to hire someone. Hire somebody who can complement you and really help you bridge that gap.

Now, I will say something, and I don’t know how you feel about this particular thing necessarily, but I do think that sometimes lawyers take out more money from their business than they should. And so, what I find is that you’ll have a $3 million law firm and the owner is taking home $2 million, but they’re doing every job in the business. And so, the money is actually there. They’re just taking home most of it. And if you do that and they do it in really interesting ways. I had a particular client that was personally not taking home a lot of money, but was paying every one of their kids and every one of their kids’ college and every one of their kids’ vacation. It’s like, I mean, if you’re spending $250,000 on your kids and their college, yeah, it’s going to feel tight for you when I tell you, you got to spend money on marketing or you got to spend money on people. So I think it’s really evaluating what are you taking out of the business and is that consistent with the size of your business, and that’s where you could find a lot of the money.

(00:15:01)

Christopher T. Anderson: That makes complete sense. So we’re talking with Luis Scott, and when we come back from this break, we are going to talk about team, because we’ve talked about hiring those key roles, but really, team is broader. It’s really everybody. And I want to have a little bit of a conversation about what it takes to get the right team on board. But first, we’ll hear from the folks that make this show possible.

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Christopher T. Anderson: We’re back with Luis Scott. We’ve been talking about what is the toughest part of scaling your law firm businesses? Is that what we’ve been talking about? Is that the toughest part, the hiring of those senior leaders?

Luis Scott: I think not just the senior leaders, but just people in general. People are difficult. And if you’ve ran any kind of business of any size, whether it’s five or ten people or been part of an organization where there’s a lot of people, maybe you were part of a non-profit, you know that people are the most difficult part of it all because everyone comes with a different life experience. They come with a different perspective about how things should be done. And unfortunately, when you hire them, you don’t know those things. You figure that out in their work ethic. You figure that out in the way they respond to you. You figure that out in the way that they communicate with other team members. And so people are very, very hard. And I had a mentor of mine one time say that the hardest thing about life is people, but the best thing about life is also people. So don’t let the worst thing and the hardest thing about life keep you from the best thing in life. And I think if you keep that perspective, you can get through it, but it doesn’t make it any less hard when you’re building your business.

Christopher T. Anderson: Sure. And so while you’re doing that, when you’re in this place, and as you said, it’s not just the top leaders, it’s everybody. Are you hiring the best people, or are you focusing more on building a team and a culture for your business? Where should your focus be?

Luis Scott: For me, it’s team and culture because one of the things that I tell my team is the moment that I no longer feel comfortable coming to work because you’re here is the moment where we can’t work together. And so I want to work around a team that I love working with. I want to work around a team that understands my heartbeat and that understands what we’re trying to build and that wants to be a part of both of those things.

And so, yes, you can train skill sets. Now, is there a capacity to people? For sure. People have all kinds of capacities. I’d love to be able to dunk a basketball, but I can’t. I don’t have that capacity. But if I was on the team, I’d have the heart of the best player on the team, and I’d have the work ethic of the best player on the team, and I’d have the discipline of the best player on the team. I’d rather have a bunch of those guys than to have a bunch of really great players who just make it terrible to work around. And so I focus more on do they fit our culture? Our culture of work ethic, ambition. I always say that you got to love on people and show grace. Am I hiring somebody who loves on people and shows grace, or am I hiring somebody that’s a total tyrant? I would rather have the person who loves and shows grace and can be worked with and build a great team where people enjoy working than to have constant turnover because I have somebody who is terrible to be around. And so I focus on the culture.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. And so, a lot of people say that. And one of the things that I tell people is because people are like, well, how do I get culture? I’m like, no, you’ve got one.

Luis Scott: Yes.

Christopher T. Anderson: You might not have been intentional, you may not even know what it is, but you’ve got one. So where do you start? How do you, first of all, encourage or entice people that do fit in your culture? I’m talking about even before you screen them, how do you make your business attractive to the people that you want to work with?

Luis Scott: Yeah, so one of the things is, and this may sound cliché, and somebody’s going to be like, oh, here we go again with vision, mission values. They’ve probably heard this before, but I think it’s making your vision, your mission, your values known.

(00:20:03)

That has to be known to all applicants when they come in to interview, you have to use the interview process to screen people out. And you ask questions like, we have some core values. Clients come first. Respect without exception. Lead with heart, lead through service. We’re going to ask questions about that. Tell us a scenario where someone did not respect you. How did you respond and see what they say? We want to ask a question. If a client is rude to you, if a client needs you and you’re working on a project, what do you do? And if the person says, I would immediately drop everything and start working with the client. Oh, there’s the client, that’s the person. They would put the client first. That’s a great answer. And we don’t tell them that right, because we’re in the interview process, but we’re asking questions based on core values. We’re asking questions based on the vision and the mission.

Now, we don’t always get it right. You don’t always get it right, but you’re going to have a higher likelihood of getting it right if you do that than if you just let it up to chance. And then the second piece to this is you have to fire when people violate those core values. Now, that’s the hard piece, especially if you get to know someone. And we’ve had scenarios in the past where an employee stole money, where an employee was rude to another employee or to a client, and the only option you have is to either uphold your core values or to be looked at as somebody who is soft on the core values, and we just choose to uphold them.

And I can give countless stories, but we had an attorney who on Zoom gave the bird, the middle finger to a client because he was upset about the conversation. And this was a big producer for us, and we had a choice. He’d been with us for about two or three years. We had a choice to either uphold our core value of respect without exception, or to let it slide. And we decided that day to terminate him. And so that’s how you let people know that you’re serious about culture and that your core values matter to the organization. And when you do that, you’ll find people that love your core values.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. No, that’s a great story. It makes me think of Vern Harnish writes in ‘Scaling Up’ that, you know it’s a core value if you’re willing to be punished for it.

Luis Scott: Yes. Oh, that’s so good.

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. And that makes me think of that. All right, so you attract them through the screening, and I imagine once you’ve got a culture going, birds of a feather flock together, right? So your team probably attracts team and people that they’d like to work with, and they bring them into the business.

Luis Scott: And we incentivize that, too, by the way. So we do a $5,000 bonus if you bring a friend to the firm that we hire. That gives everybody a friend. And studies have shown that people who have friends at work are 63% more likely to stay at the job. And so, that’s really important.

Christopher T. Anderson: That is. And that’s a great segue to another break for our sponsors. But when we come back, that’s exactly what I want to talk about, because now we talked about culture a little bit, and we’ve talked about how to attract and screen and make sure we’re hiring for that and to show the team that we’re serious about it. But I want to talk a little bit about retention and what it takes to keep the great team that you’ve put together after we hear from the sponsors that I hope we keep sponsoring the show. So we’ll be back in a minute.

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Christopher T. Anderson: And we’re back with Luis Scott. Now, we’ve been talking about team and culture. We were talking earlier about growing your law firm, and of course, the team is key to that. So I wanted to shift the conversation just a little bit here in our last segment of the show to talk about, okay, we’ve got the team. We’ve found them, and we screened them, and we’re hoping that they’re a cultural fit. So what do we do now, Luis? Because at the very end of the last segment, you talked about how people who work with friends are more likely to stay, but what are we as a business leader, what are we supposed to be doing to keep that team together? Because I think a lot of businesses are just like, okay, you’re on board. Go to work. And that’s the last time you ever really talk to them. What should we be doing to retain folks?

Luis Scott: Yeah, so I have the five P’s of retention, which you almost have to explain in order for people to know exactly what I mean. But the five P’s of retention, not in any particular order, is power, projects, profit, people, and promotion. Each one of those means something different.

(00:25:01)

So a power is what’s the level of authority that people have. They want to be clear on their authority. Projects, what are they responsible for, so we call that the directly responsible individual. Are they clear on what does success look like? Profit is how do they make money and what is it that they need to do to make more money? Promotion is how do they elevate in the organization? Are they clear about how they actually elevate? We call that the career pathways. And then people, have we been intentional about developing culture in the business. So those are the five P’s of retention. If you do that successfully, you’ll have people who are excited about staying and also bringing people on the train as well.

Christopher T. Anderson: What about personal development, professional development? Do you do anything like that with and for your team?

Luis Scott: Yes, absolutely. Personal and professional development is a real tenet of our firm. I spend a lot of time doing personal and professional development training. We host leadership hours, and we also have a leadership academy. That falls in the promotion and profit piece. So the more professionally developed you are, and personally developed you are, the more likely you’re going to make more money, the more likely you’re going to be promoted. So if you enhance your skill set both personally and professionally, you’re likely to make more money. So we’ve put that. that’s also another two more P’s, right? Personal and professional. So I need to change it to the seven P’s of retention. But yeah.

Christopher T. Anderson: And what do you say to people who are, like, come from an experience where they invest a lot? Because that sounds like some investment in people. Invest in people who then take that investment and either demand more money or leave.

Luis Scott: Man, I guess that’s the conversation that leaders are always having, especially around our business. I’ve always said that we have a duty and a responsibility to train our people and develop them. I don’t think it matters how I feel about that. And I think if you’re a business owner, law firm owner, whatever kind of business you have, this is not a question about how you feel about it. It’s you have a duty as an owner to develop people personally and professionally. And if that person decides to ask for more money, the only question you have to ask is, did the information you give them through your duty make them more valuable? If it did, pay them more. If it didn’t, don’t pay them more. Like, it’s just a simple question. Now, if when they leave, the question is, did you make them so valuable that you then couldn’t afford them? And that question is really on you as a businessowner to make sure that you’re developing people for the next position and the next position and the next position.

And one of the things that I tell all of our employees in our weekly huddle is that we want you to have opportunity here in the firm, and we’re going to do everything we can to develop you so that when the opportunity arises, you can take that opportunity. But to the extent that opportunity is not available, when you get to the point where you are ready for the opportunity, we’re going to wish you well on your next job. And we’re going to hope that you’re being elevated in the new position and that you’re representing the firm well and that you look back and go, I enjoyed my time at Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, and if you can say that, then I did my job and I owned my duty. And so that’s the way I look at it.

Christopher T. Anderson: I think that’s a pretty amazing way to look at it, quite honestly. I think a lot of people have problems with that, right? It’s hard to make those investments, to watch them walk out the door. One of the things I’ve heard someone say is, you’ve got two choices. You can train and develop people, and sometimes they’ll leave or you cannot, and then they’ll stay. The same people that they were. And obviously, you want to develop into that place and hope that the opportunity is there with you. So you’re developing folks.

But I think it’s impressive and good that when we were talking about, you know, what it takes to acquire new talent and to retain new talent, the first time we talked about money here was about developing them. And I think I brought it up. I said, what happens if they demand more money? But let’s make this a little topical. In today’s hiring environment, the old way of knowing what people should make and what people are looking for is changing rapidly. How do you continue to attract top talent? Do you pay top dollar or are there other ways? How should our listeners be navigating this very tight hiring pool? Should they just be paying a lot of money or what should they be doing differently?

Luis Scott: We have a saying in our HR department that if you compete on price, you’re going to lose every time. And so, I think that it’s more than just competing on price. I do think you need to pay top of the market, right? That’s a very important thing. And if you’re not paying top of the market, people are going to feel undervalued, underpaid and so forth. But I think it’s creating an experience where people enjoy their life more than at another firm. We’ve had people as recently as last week come back to the firm after leaving for less than a month. They would leave somewhere for more pay and would come back to the firm. We call that boomerang employment. I think in the last two years, we’ve had about 15 people come back to the firm.

(00:30:06)

And the reason is because if you create a place where people enjoy working and they leave, they will notice the difference, especially if they’re working for somebody who’s a tyrant and who is not very kind and so forth. So we spend our time building the environment and the culture, et cetera. So you do have to pay top dollar, but you have to make the place a place worth coming to work. And one of our company goals last year was to create an environment where people enjoyed coming into work. That was like our big thing. And so, when you leave our firm, you’re leaving not knowing how good it’s going to be over there. You may be getting paid more, but you’re going to second guess, like, is it going to be good as lunch every week and breakfast every week and all these little goodies that we do, and you spin the wheel for your birthday and your anniversary and all these extra things that we do? Or is it just more pay and we get five weeks of PTO? So am I getting more pay for two weeks of PTO? You have to really think about that and wrestle with that.

And so, I think that attracting the best talent is having the best incentive package that you can have, which is a combination of compensation, culture, promotion capabilities, and then retaining them through the five P’s and possibly the seven P’s that we just discussed and making sure that they’re there for an extended period of time.

Christopher T. Anderson: That totally makes sense. So let’s talk about then. We talked about developing people and helping them to grow in personal and professional development, but I didn’t ask specifically about leadership. And one of the things you said is early on in our conversation, you said you have to develop leadership at all levels of the organization, not just at the top. So what would you say the importance of leadership is in your business and what other people should be thinking about in theirs and how do you get there?

Luis Scott: I think you have to look at leadership as a leveraged employee. This is a person who doesn’t need anyone to tell them what to do. They get it done. And so, the more people you have that get it done without being told what to do, the more peace of mind you’re going to have and the less you have to be involved in the day to day. So the larger your organization is, the more leaders you have to have. And the more leaders you have, the more training you have to put in place in order for those leaders to really thrive and to take your business to the next level. And I love John Maxwell, I think, says this is a paraphrase where he says that the lid of your organization is that your weakest leader or something like that. Again, it’s a paraphrase.

But I do believe it’s true. If you have weak leadership, you’re likely not going to grow. And many times when I go into organizations, they generally have a really bad managing attorney or a really bad COO, and they’re stuck. And this person is like a legacy employee. They’ve been there forever and ever and ever. They haven’t grown. They’ve done nothing to professionally develop, either because the owner didn’t intentionally do it or because the employee did not seek it out. Either way, they haven’t grown, and they’re hitting that lid, and they’re not able to bust out of that. So I believe that the more you can invest in your leadership, the more you can invest in your leaders at every level, whether it’s top or mid-level managers, the more likely it is that you’ll have a leveraged team that works without you and the more peace of mind you’ll have and the better business you’ll have, especially when you’re on vacation, which is the best time to have a great business.

Christopher T. Anderson: Absolutely. So let me end this conversation with a softball question. Because what you just said, just I have to ask this question, and I don’t usually like to ask questions where my guests can kind of blow their own horn. So try not to blow too loud. But talking about leadership, I mean, the question just has to be asked. Okay, developing leadership among my team is really important. What about me? There’s no magic that just says, because I started this business, I founded this business, I grew it to 3 million, 5 million, 8 million, that I have the leadership skills that I need to develop leaders, right? Where did that come from? Yeah, Maxwell’s book for sure. But seriously, where did it come from? What do you have to say? What about the business owner? Where does that leadership come from?

Luis Scott: I think that the business owner has three to five areas where they really need to focus on developing themselves. Number one is reading. I’m a big proponent of reading. I talk about this. I’ve read in excess of 400 books at this point, cover to cover. That’s not audiobooks. That’s like sitting down and reading a hardcover book. I’ve also do those short audiobooks. I do one a day. So I think number one is reading. Number two is associating with the right people and expanding your mind through masterminds, through coaching, through mentorship. I think number two. Number three is experience. Being willing to risk and learn through experience, I think, is really powerful. Number four is attending conferences. That was something that really grew me. And so, that four-part investment into yourself is really critical. And so, I love being part of a community. I love reading. I love going to conferences and watching people speak, even on YouTube.

(00:35:02)

And I love making sure that I have a mentor and a mentee relationship that can coach me and get me past those things that I don’t see the blind spots in my life. But one of the things that the goal for me, and I don’t ever claim to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, I’ve been in many rooms where I don’t feel like very smart at all. But my goal is to be able to get into that room. And the way you get into that room is that you develop yourself as much as you possibly can so that somebody will invite you into that room.

Christopher T. Anderson: Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, Luis. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on and being a guest on the Un-Billable Hour.

Luis Scott: Thank you very much for having me.

Christopher T. Anderson: You bet. All right, just before I let you go, though, do you have a way, like, if people have been listening and say, I’ve got so many questions, how can folks get in touch with you to follow up and ask if they’ve got another question to ask that question or see how they can chat with you some more?

Luis Scott: Absolutely. They can reach me on my personal website. Luis, L-U-I-S Scott, S-C-O-T-T, Jr.com. Luisscottjunior.com. And you can find information about me, about my books, about 8 Figure Firm, or just ask me a general question right there.

Christopher T. Anderson: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. And of course, this does wrap up this edition of The Un-Billable Hour. And thank you to all our listeners for sticking with us. My guest today has been Luis Scott, and as I said earlier, he is both an owner of the Bader Scott Injury Lawyers and 8 Figure Firm Consulting author of, I’m just going to read the first part, ‘The King of Growth’, and then there’s like a big giant subtitle. But he’s been a great guest and we really appreciate you being here. And of course, I am Christopher T. Anderson and I look forward to seeing or hearing or imagining all of you listeners back here 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 also that you get a second chance to work with us here at The Un-Billable Hour at our community table every third Thursday at three. Third Thursdays at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, is a community table where you can call in and ask me and guests that I have on that show whatever you want. It’s ask me anything and be part of the show and be part of the community table, be part of The Un-Billable Hour. And of course, please remember, you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. Thank you for joining us. We will speak again soon.

Outro: The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer. Thanks for listening to the Un-Billable Hour, the law practice advisory podcast. Join us again for the next edition right here with Legal Talk Network.

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