Special Episode: Get Real. Stop Kidding Yourself. Make Your Firm Profitable

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

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 Unbillable 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 Unbillable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson. And today’s episode, well, it’s a special episode. Usually we talk about acquisition, getting new clients. We talk about running your business, we talk about the results you get and the metrics you should be using. We talk about you and we’ve had a couple of great episodes about that, but today we’re going to do things a little bit differently. I have a special guest. My guest today is RJon Robins, and I’ve known RJon for wow, probably been working. We’ve known each other since 2013, so 11 years now. Worked together for part of that time and RJon runs a really amazing business where he helps lots of lawyers called How to manage a small law firm. He’s the founder and that’s how we got to know each other. The reason I say it’s a special show is think about the show as kind of a doctor’s visit.

RJon takes and works with lawyers from small and not so small law firms, and they come to him with a variety of problems, kind of like you would go to your doctor’s office and say something hurts, and he helps to figure out what the cause is so that he can help them to have the law firm that they want. That’s what the conversation’s going to be about. I’m going to ask Arjon about some of the things that he is run into and also how he got into this. And so that’s by way of a typically poor introduction RJon Robins, welcome to the show. What would you like to say about an introduction?

RJon Robins:

Thanks for having me, Chris. I’d like to talk about what’s in it for the audience because the audience doesn’t care about me. They don’t care if I’m alive, they don’t care if I’m dead. They don’t care about my background, they don’t care about all the great stuff that I’ve done for every other person on the planet. They only care about what’s in it for them,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Which, so what’s in it for them?

RJon Robins:

Well, if you own your own law firm and you want to make it more profitable, if you want your revenues to be more predictable, if you want your marketing to work better for you, if you want to have a lower cost of acquisition, I mean, there’s seven main parts of every successful law firm, and that’s pretty much what we work on at how to manage a small law firm. We work on the marketing, we work on the sales, we work on the production. We work on helping you with your people. We work on the physical plant, we work on the financial controls, but mostly we work on you and your mindset. So you think of yourself more as a business owner who happens to own a law firm as opposed to a lawyer who just stumbled into hanging out your own shingle.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, so when I was young, there was a show called Romper Room that I liked to watch, and the host of the show would pretend that she could see me and talk directly to me. But unfortunately, we can’t know which one of those problems our audience right now is having, except

RJon Robins:

I know what problems they have. They all have the same problems. I’ve been doing this since August 24th, 1999, and it’s like the lawyer whose client comes in and says, oh, I got a unique problem. No one’s ever gone through a divorce just like me. No one’s ever had a fill in your practice area. And the lawyer’s like I see hundreds of these every single year. Good news, we’re not naming the disease after you. No one wants to have the disease named after them. You want to go to the doctor and you want the doctor to say, don’t worry. We see this all the time. We know exactly how to make it better. You’ll be great.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Are there trends? Are there things that are different today than 20?

RJon Robins:

Yes, there are trends. I’ll tell you where the trend is though. The trend is what’s popular to complain about online. So today everyone wants to complain about, let’s see, everyone right now wants to complain about staff and labor cost ratios. It’s exactly that kind of shiny object thinking as opposed to just focusing on the fundamentals of building a successful business that happens to be a law firm. When you focus on the fundamentals, you don’t have these problems. We manage over 600 of some of the fastest growing consistently for year after year after year after year for 10 years. Consistent, predictable revenue, profitability, growth, labor, cost ratios, everything. Because you focus on the fundamentals and you just basically excuse yourself from this roller coaster of fad law firm marketing.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, I don’t want to stretch the analogy too much, but I imagine doctors face the same thing too, right? There’s the disease of the year everybody’s got because it’s in the news or some celebrity had it or whatever. But the doctor’s job is to set that aside and say, alright, let me take your pulse. Let me listen to your heart. Let me listen to your lungs. Look,

RJon Robins:

Law firms are very simple businesses to run. Lawyers have been starting marketing, managing, buying and selling successful law firms for more than a thousand years. This isn’t like a brand new business model that no one’s ever figured out how to make it work. Things haven’t changed. The tools we use have changed, but the fundamentals of starting marketing, managing, buying, selling, running, managing a professional, successful law firm, these fundamentals have not changed in generations and they’re not likely to change for the foreseeable future. Marketing is still marketing the fundamentals that make marketing work made marketing work. 20 years ago, they made marketing work 10 years ago. They make your marketing work today, you observe these fundamentals, your marketing will work better. You ignore these fundamentals, you will have a rollercoaster life of marketing. The fundamentals that convert prospective clients into paying clients didn’t change from 20 years ago, 10 years ago or today.

Christopher T. Anderson:

You know what our listeners are facing right now. You know what the actual problems are because you’re seeing them come in your door every day. You’re talking to new clients of how to manage a small law firm. You’re talking to people who think they have unique problems or maybe they don’t think they have unique problems, whatever, but you’ve drilled them down to seven key areas of their law firms. But let’s talk about the five, six most common things that are presenting themselves to you and what the causes, the root causes are that you’re able to help address in a way that might be actionable for our listeners.

RJon Robins:

The reality of what it takes to build a successful law firm is very simple. There’s only one thing you got to do to build a highly successful law firm, except no one wants to do it. So instead, they look for easy workarounds and they hire a line of charlatans who promise magic beads, magic beans solutions, and they test this and they experiment with that instead of just focusing on the one single thing you’ve got to do to build a successful law firm. And that is pursue truth. Truth is reality. All things that are real are true. We can hypothesize about why it’s performing the way it’s performing, but the reality is it’s performing the way it’s performing. And until, unless we are willing to take a real, honest, mature look at how the marketing is performing, we can’t do anything about it except take shots in the dark.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So when you say that it’s about the truth, are you saying that law firm owners, people who are running law firms, don’t look at that reality?

RJon Robins:

They don’t look at reality, they evade reality. One of my favorite quotes, as you know, is by Ayn Rand who said, we can evade reality, but we cannot avoid the consequences of evading reality. So we can avoid looking at the reality of what our marketing is doing for our business, but we can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding that reality. And the reality is going to be unpredictable flow of clients, bringing in the wrong kind of clients, bringing in clients who have the wrong expectations, bringing in clients who aren’t pre-qualified and predisposed to want to hire your firm, bringing in clients who it becomes very painful to serve them because of the wrong clients for your firm. And then we got to look at the reality of your sales conversion process.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Well, let’s stick to marketing. I mean, there’s going to be a lot of realities here, but I want to bring this one home. What are they looking at or what are they hiding from? What do you tell people to do

RJon Robins:

Differently? The first thing you ask is what’s the biggest problem that most struggling law firms have? The biggest problem that most struggling law firms have is they’re not willing to look at reality. They’re not looking, they’re not willing to look at the reality of each of the seven main parts of their business. They’re not willing to look at the reality of the marketing. They’re not willing to look at the reality of the sales process, their staff’s performance, their processes and their systems and their procedures, their physical plant, their financials, and their financial controls. They’re not willing to look at the reality of their own behaviors, their own actions, their own excuse making processes. They’re not willing to look at the reality of what’s going on in their business. Okay, that’s problem number one. Problem number two, they’re not willing to take responsibility. They want to blame shift.

Look, you want control. I want control. We all want to have control, more control in our lives and our businesses. It’s a natural human thing. We want control. Control freaks are given a bad name. We all want more control. Well control comes from responsibility. A hundred percent control comes from a hundred percent responsibility. Try to give away an ounce of responsibility, give away an ounce of control along with it so people aren’t willing to take real responsibility. I live in a world of 100% responsibility. You live in a world of 100% responsibility, personal responsibility. That’s what got us to get along in the first place. We both saw the world from the same perspective of if I want my life to be better is a hundred percent my responsibility to make my life better. But that’s not what happens in the legal industry. What happens in the legal industry, and this is not necessarily everyone’s fault, this is trained into us.

We’re trained to think about this in a non-real way. We’re trained to think of responsibility in a way that does not match with reality. We’re trained to fight over a hundred percent responsibility, comparative negligence, who’s more responsible for the accident? Well, there isn’t a hundred percent responsibility in any relationship between two human beings. There’s 200% responsibility. You are a hundred percent responsible for you, and I’m a hundred percent responsible for me. And as soon as a lawyer who owns a business that happens to be a law firm, starts thinking in this new way, all of a sudden they stop wasting their time. They stop wasting their energy, they stop wasting their money trying to shift responsibility to other people. They grab hold of responsibility for themselves and they get more control. Problem number three.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Let me you before number three, because first of all, two things. One, it doesn’t get more fundamental than that, right? I mean, I think we’re talking, I said, what’s the biggest thing? And you just came right at it with like, well, dude, you’re going to ask me about marketing. You’re asking me about sales. It’s this fundamental thing.

RJon Robins:

This is what we do at how to manage a small law firm. We get to the reality of what’s going on in your business, and yeah, we’ll help you with marketing, we’ll help you with sales, we’ll help you with people. We’ll help you with documenting processes and systems and procedures. But if we don’t work on your mindset, this is how to manage a small law firm. This is personal development for entrepreneurs who happen to own law firms.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And then you were about to go to number three, but before we go to number three, we got to hear from our sponsors. And then we’re going to go to the third thing right after this word. And we’re back with ouRJon Robins, and we’ve been talking about all the law firms that come to work with him and his team at how to manage small law firm. What are the primary things that need to be diagnosed? What are they coming with? And we’re going to go on to what the next thing was, because I think these two obviously will underlie everything. But what else are folks facing? What are you seeing that you’re able to help them with help law firm owners with in order to be able to achieve the law firm that they want?

RJon Robins:

Lots of lawyers are very unclear about the purpose of their law firm. Most lawyers with struggling law firms, they think of their business like their baby. They think of their law firm like their baby, but as a fundamentally inappropriate way to think about your relationship with your law firm, right? So you’ve got a son, I’ve got a son, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for tuya. We would kill, we would die, we would suffer. We would do without, we would do anything for our children. That’s a normal, healthy relationship for a parent to have with a child. And we don’t do it because we expect the child to give us something back. We do it just at a pure love for our children. That’s not your business. The analogy to think of your law firm like your baby, puts you in this mindset of, I’m here to give to my business.

I’m here to suffer from my business and sacrifice for my business and do without from my business. That is a completely unhealthy and irrational relationship for the owner of a law firm to have with their law firm a much healthier, a much more rational, better for your clients, better for your staff, better for your family, better for you is to think of your law firm like your mule. Why do farmers have mules? Farmers don’t have mules so they can have friends. Farmers have mules because the mule is there to pull the plow. And why does a farmer need the mule to pull the plow? The farmer needs a mule to pull the plow so the farmer can grow crops so the farmer can feed the farmer’s family. And if the farmer manages the mule efficiently, manages and does the planning of the crops efficiently and gives the mule proper training and proper care, there should be enough crops left over after feeding the farmer’s family to take to market and make this thing called profit. But that’s not the way most lawyers think of their law firms because most lawyers have bought hook, line and sinker into the doctrine of sacrifice, which is bred into us in law school beaten. It’s

Christopher T. Anderson:

Romanticized into so people, it’s even more than bred. It’s idealized,

RJon Robins:

Which gets lawyers thinking, I should take pride in how much I suffer. I should take pride in how much I sacrifice. I take pride in how much I can endure. I take pride in how much I can do without, and I’m going to apologize for reaping any of the benefits of putting this business together and running it efficiently and profitably. So what’s the purpose of your law firm? That’s number three. The number one purpose of your law firm is to serve your life. It needs to serve you financially by giving you enough profit. It needs to serve you personally by giving you enough freedom of time, and it needs to serve you professionally by allowing you to make a positive impact in the world. But if you don’t think of it this way, your whole law firm is just going to be one giant torture chamber with bad results, which is what you see in most struggling law firms. This mindset shift hasn’t taken place yet. Once it takes place, bam, now we can start implementing all the things we need to implement, which are fairly mechanical and predictable to make the business work better. But

Christopher T. Anderson:

From the way you describe it, it sounds like it’s more than clarity as to the purpose of the firm. It’s almost like permission being allowed first break or maybe just breaking down, but somehow walking away from the concept that it’s got to be a sacrifice. That it’s got to be a burden, that it’s got to be the proper image is dying at the wheel and allowing yourself to think about it as your mule instead.

RJon Robins:

Look, one of the core values of my company is the pursuit of profit and profit is an effect. Profit is the natural inevitable effect of every voluntary exchange between two human beings, anytime, two human beings, a lawyer and a client owner of a law firm and an employee, an owner of a law firm and a vendor. Anytime two human beings make a voluntary exchange, both of them are making a profit. Profit is simply when you exchange something, you value less to get something you value more. It’s not just a matter of financial profit. Profit can be measured and should be measured in terms of obviously financial. It should also be measured personally. It should be measured professionally and any other way that matters to you. But this is not how most law firms are run. Most law firms are not run with the intention of making a profit. They’re run with the intention of making a sacrifice for the sake of making a sacrifice as opposed to making a sacrifice as an investment in pursuit of a better life. The purpose of your business is to help you make a positive impact on the world and in your life. And these are not mutually exclusive goals.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Not at all. And I think that’s a perfect segue to the fourth thing, right? Because here’s the trap, right? You get right where you just talked about, and this where you can see a law of law firms making a big mistake. Law firm owners making a big mistake with their relationship with their business. What is the fourth thing that they need to be aware of and careful with?

RJon Robins:

The fourth biggest problem is owners of law firms who use the business to get love and get security and get self-esteem instead of using the business to give love and give security and give self-esteem. And by the way, no one was more guilty of this than me back when I was broke and back when I was struggling. I used my business to get love, and I don’t mean love in an inappropriate way, but to get appreciation, to get appreciation, to get validation, to get people to like me. And I used my business to get security, and I was always trying to get security and get security, and what could I get? I felt like I needed and to get self-esteem. And then I began this journey of personal development, and I worked with some brilliant, brilliant coaches and did my own long, dark night of the soul as they speak and went on my journey and on my journey of personal development and personal discovery.

And I publicly credit Bob Berg and I publicly credit David Nagle and I publicly credit Bob Proctor and Ayn Rand and all kinds of other mentors and coaches who have helped me along the way, both alive and dead. And once I began to use my business to give love, to give security, to give self-esteem, everything in the business starts to work better. Wherever you’re having a problem in your law firm, I’m saying this for your audience. Wherever you are having the biggest problem in your law firm, I already know that’s an area where you’re using your business to get love, get security, and or get self-esteem wherever your business is having the greatest success. That is where you are already consciously or unconsciously using your business to give love, give security, and give self-esteem.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, and this one really strikes me as particularly hard. We’re going to take another break right here, and when we come back, I want to ask you about something that I know is near and dear to your heart. You’ve already said the word once, but we’re going to talk about TA Tuia and what that means When we come back, we are back with ouRJon Robins. We’ve been talking about trying to get love, trying to get security, trying to get self-esteem from your law firm business. I wanted to maybe put some brass tacks to that RJon, what does that actually mean for someone to be doing that? What does it look like when someone’s doing that? Let’s start with secure or love trying to get love,

RJon Robins:

Okay? And let’s be sure we’re clear. Love means appreciation, liking you. We don’t mean it in an inappropriate way. I was talking to the owner of a 13 or $14 million, one of our members, we got law firms from 30 or $40 million all the way down to brand new startups that we manage. This person has about a 12 or 13 million law firm. He was saying almost like without thinking about it, I need to make sure my staff likes me so they will respect me so they will do their job. And I said, no, you don’t. And he said, what do you mean? I said, they don’t have to like you to do their job. He goes, okay, that’s fair. They have to respect me so they’ll do their job. I said, no, they don’t. What do you mean? Well, they don’t have to respect you to do their job either, do they?

What they need to do to do their job is they need to do their job in order to do their job. They need instructions, they need training, they need guidance. They may be more motivated to do their job because they respect you so much and it might feel better working with them if they like you. And I wouldn’t recommend hiring or working with anyone who doesn’t like you. But let’s be clear, they need to do their job, to do their job. They need to do their job. They don’t have to like you. But what happens is someone’s not doing their job or they’re not doing the job the way you want them to do their job or need the job done, and you want them to like you. So you are reluctant to tell them the truth about their performance. So you say either a lie of commission or a lie of omission, and you lie to your staff all day long, right?

They’re not doing the job. You want them to do the way you want it to do, and you say, Hey, good job. When you don’t really think they’re doing a good job because you want them to like you or you don’t say, Hey, let me tell you how I need you to do the job differently. Afraid they won’t like you. There’s an example of using that relationship with your staff to get love, to get them to like you instead of using the relationship to give love, which is, look, I want you to be successful. In order to be successful, you have to do your job better and to do your job better. Here’s how you have to do it differently. And even if you don’t, like I say this to people all the time, I’m committed to giving you love, giving you security, giving you self-esteem, even if you hate me for it.

Think about the parent who uses the relationship with the kid to get love, get security, get self-esteem from the kid. That parent is going to have a kid that’s completely out of control, and probably the kid will get into a lot of trouble. On the other hand, the parent who says, I love you enough to tell you the truth. I love you enough to tell you what you need to hear. Even if you don’t want to hear it. And even if you hate me for it, I still am committed enough to your best interest that I’m going to give you the truth. The same thing happens with marketing. There’s thousands of lawyers whose marketing could be so much better if only they would speak their truth in their marketing instead of doing marketing that basically is designed to avoid criticism or criticism by anyone else. Their whole marketing is geared to not offend anyone as opposed to gearing the marketing to really excite the right people. And I could go on and on and on about all the seven main parts of the firm.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, no, I think those are really, really great examples that help to illustrate it. And what’s fascinating to me is, as I hear you describe that, is it drops, it keeps dropping all the way back to embrace reality.

RJon Robins:

It’s almost as if I’ve invested the last 25 years thinking about this stuff,

Christopher T. Anderson:

But it is, when we started, we talked about that being a foundational thing, right? It’s because just giving love, that’s telling the truth. It’s about helping them to have reality too. Have access to that reality and hopefully embrace it. Alright, let’s move along and talk about number five. We’re audio only. So T tuia, our job was showing me a logo he’s done with that phrase. And that phrase is more than a phrase. You mentioned it before, it’s name of your son.

RJon Robins:

When I was broke. So in 2006, I had left the Florida Bars law office Management assistance Service. By that point I had already helped at is documented over 9,000 solo and small law firm owners with every aspect of starting marketing, managing, buying, selling, blah, blah, blah, a successful law firm. I’d already developed a pretty good reputation in the world of small law firm management. But I had, because of immaturity, because of naivety, because of inexperience, arguably because of stupidity, I had failed to follow my own advice when it came to transforming a practice into a truly sustainable independent business. And so when Allie, my wife, got sick, everything fell apart really fast and we went broke. And for people who’ve heard the story before they read on the website, they think that it’s an exaggeration. It’s the opposite of an exaggeration. I was much more broke than I talk about publicly.

It was pretty scary. And then when we finally started to make a little bit of decent money, thanks to you in large part, to help me on the national CLE speaking tour, which is why you have my forever loyalty sincerely, we finally started to make a little bit of money and we were buying some furniture, some decent furniture, which for us at the time was ikea. So that should give you an idea how broke we were. I was off the road for a few days on the national CLE speaking tour, and I was just kind of venting to Allie over meatballs in Ikea, over these lawyers is like just so many. You can have excuses or you can have results, and they keep opting for excuses instead of taking action. And I was just kind of venting. And I said, I wish I could just grab them by the collar and shake them and say, take all your excuses and shove them up your ass, which is what someone did for me, which is why I wasn’t broke anymore.

And so Allie, being brilliant and creative, which she is, she grabbed one of those little Ikea pencils and she scribbled up a little thing called Taye, TAYE, Astuya, A-S-T-U-Y-A, take all your excuses and shove them up your ass. And that became a rallying cry. And every time I was scared to do something and every time I was thinking about making a comfortable excuse, instead of taking decisive action and making a real commitment to something. And even today, look, we all have moments of weakness. We all have our dark days. Taye Astuya, take all your excuses and shove them up your ass. Yes or yes. Let’s go after the life we want. That became our rally and cry. And as you know, when September 1st, 2015 came around after two miscarriages and two rounds of IVF, which you lived through most of that with me, and we finally had our son, we gave him the name Taye Astuya, and that’s his name.

Take all your excuses and shove them off your ass. And I make this point to all of our new hires. We have over a hundred employees, and in their onboarding program, I make a point of them understanding that this isn’t like some slogan, this isn’t like some logo. This isn’t like some marketing company came up with a fancy thing to say, this goes to my soul. This is core to who I am, which is expressed in everything we do in our business. And if more law firm owners would take all your excuses and shove them up your ass, embrace reality, embrace a hundred percent personal responsibility. Get and stay clear about your purpose. Use your business, use your marketing, use your sales, use your production. Use your relationships with your staff. Use your relationship with your clients. Use your financial controls to give love, give security, give self-esteem. You would have an amazing business that works for you and a really great life to show for it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I think that’s an amazing way to wrap the show because that is, well, one is the fundamental. This is the other end of it because it embodies doing all the things that we talked about. It embodies embracing reality, embodies taking personal responsibility. It embodies being clear with your purpose. It embodies not trying to get love from your business and really just using it as the mule to achieve the results you want. RJon, we’ve covered so much in such a little amount of time and there’s so much more. If people, and I know that you’re not taking new clients right now, you have a wait list. But if people want to just tap into learn more, get some resources, how can they get in touch? What’s the best place for them to look?

RJon Robins:

Right. Thank you for asking me that. What we have done is we have created a program called The Waiting Room because that’s where you wait while you’re on the wait list.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And in the doctor’s office, our analogies come in full circle.

RJon Robins:

It’s free. There’s no charge to be in the waiting room as long as we’re holding a hundred percent refundable deposit, all kinds of resources and tools and programs and coaching live events too. All in the waiting room for free while you’re waiting on the waiting list. And if you’re not even sure you want to go into the waiting room, we got a bunch of webinars and free things you can download. And of course they can read my book, profit First for Lawyers, and they can listen to one of our podcasts. Profit First for Lawyers is one of the podcasts we’ve got going on out there. And we’ll give you all the information you need for free. And if you can help yourself, more power to you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Great. And then where could they look for that? Just we talked,

RJon Robins:

Oh, just go to the website, how to manage a small law firm.com or how to manage.com.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Either way. Fantastic RJon Robins, thanks for being on the show.

RJon Robins:

Thanks for having me, Chris. Great to be here.

Christopher T. Anderson:

My pleasure. And of course, this is Christopher Anderson. I look forward to seeing all of you or virtually seeing all of you next month with another great guest as we learn more about the topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you. And remember, you can also subscribe to all the additions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. And I thank you for joining us and we’ll speak again soon.

Announcer:

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