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Welcome to the How to Manage Digital Membership Site!
Congratulations and welcome to the How To Manage A Small Law Firm Community. I look forward to getting to know you better and celebrating the growing success of your law firm and positive impact that will have on your life, in the coming months and years-ahead.
I want to take a moment and introduce you to a few key concepts that sometimes trip-up new Members. And it contains a sort of “quick start” roadmap to help you organize your energies and attention over next few months.
Those are interesting words “community” and “member”. We use these words deliberately. How To Manage A Small Law Firm is much more than just the world’s very best undisputed champion when it comes to providing outside CEO, COO & CFO services for solo and small law firms. If it was just that, our “Members” wouldn’t be getting the sort of phenomenal results year-in and year-out, that likely attracted you to us in the first place. There is another dimension to it. And that added dimension is the community you’ve been vetted-for and accepted-into.
The more you grow your law firm and the more your personal life positively transforms as a result of that professional growth, the less you may find yourself having in common with lawyers you know who for a variety of reasons, are content to settle for a life of struggle with an under-performing law firm. As you begin to see and feel that happening, please know that most of your fellow Members experienced the same thing and they’ll be able to empathize with you.
I know there’s a lot to learn and do. And you’re probably used to being on top of things which you may not be in the beginning. Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of all of it. It’s like the first time you went to court or participated in a deposition it was probably scary and confusing and you felt like everything was happening at a million miles an hour. But then once you got the hang of it, things weren’t nearly as intimidating and maybe you even started to have fun with it. Just do the work and trust the process and pretty soon you will begin to see and feel your law firm and your life transforming for the better, all around you.
I am writing this letter to clarify a few important points and to help guide you through the next few months. Because I know there’s a lot to learn about. Plus you’re going to be exposed to a lot of new ideas. Perhaps even some ideas that contradict much of what you may have been told by long-suffering lawyers with struggling law firms about how they believe things have to be. I know it can be a bit intimidating at first.
Three Important Concepts:
Concept #1: Let the results speak for themselves.
We aren’t here to teach you everything you could possibly know about building and running a highly-successful law firm that gives you enough net income to afford the life you want for your family, with enough control over your time to enjoy it and by doing work that matters to you. This is not a school. We don’t offer classes. And we’re not really very interested in theories.
Instead, this is a place to get results. Please keep in mind that you don’t really need to know “everything” about how to become very effective at managing your business, in order to reap the rewards that come from becoming very effective at managing your business. Just like you don’t need to know everything about how most of the things in your life work in order to make use of them. For example, I don’t presume to understand everything about how the antilock braking system works on my car; and yet I still consider myself to be a very good driver and I’ve driven all around the country and I even trust myself enough to drive with my family in the car. Similarly, I have only a very basic idea of how the air conditioning system works in my office and yet I still manage to keep the temperature at a comfortable level.
When you encounter new ideas, new approaches and new (even counter-intuitive) ways of doing things here’s what I’d like to ask you to do. Ask yourself “What’s the worst thing that is likely to happen if I experiment with this to see if it works?” And if the worst thing that is likely to happen in your estimation isn’t too bad, then keep an open mind about testing it out.
Then later, after you see that the car really will slow down and stop when you apply pressure to the brake pedal, if you really want to know the engineering schematics of how and why anything we ask you to do really does work, your assigned CEO, COO, CFO or I will be happy to explain it to you in so much excruciating detail that you may be sorry that you asked!
Seriously, we are for-real law small law firm management nerds. We are fascinated by how and why and the history of how the business of law firm management works in ways that will bore any sane person to death. I promise, you’ll ask me to stop before I’m done explaining. But you didn’t engage our services to learn “why” it works. You engaged our services to help you make it work so let’s stay focused on that at least until you’ve achieved your first set of goals.
Concept 2: Your success is hiding in the shadows, but it’s very close to you.
Right now, your law firm and your life are the way that they are because of what you have or have not been willing to tolerate. The areas of your life that you enjoy the most where you get what you want, are that way because in those areas of your life you are unwilling to tolerate anything less and you are unwilling to accept what you do not want. Similarly, the bad things in your life are there because you’re willing to tolerate them.
In other words, if you were unwilling to tolerate those bad things you wouldn’t tolerate them. Instead you’d do something about them and you wouldn’t stop until the things you wouldn’t tolerate, were all out of your life to make room for better things.
I’m referring here to “things” but I trust you understand we could be referring to people, places, conditions, etc.
This simple concept scares a lot of people the first time they encounter it. I know it sure did scare me the first time I put it to practical use and produced more positive results in less time and with far less physical effort than I ever believed possible. We find there are three reasons new Members of How To Manage A Small Law Firm sometimes take awhile to embrace this concept.
First, it contradicts so much of what we are all taught. We’re just not taught that having a better life really is as simple as not tolerating anything less than what we want. Sure, most of us were taught to pursue goals and dreams. But we weren’t taught to mind our standards. Because goals and dreams are what we are going after. But standards are what we settle for.
Second, it creates tension with our friends, family and some professional colleagues. I’m going to say this as gently as I can. Your life is as good as it is because your friends, family and professional colleagues won’t tolerate less from you. But your life isn’t better than it is because your friends, family and professional colleagues buy into all the reasons, explanations and excuses you have for why things aren’t better. In other words, they enable you by tolerating your bullshit. But we know better. We know what you are capable of.
Third, some people feel embarrassed when they come face to face with the fact that they could have been living a much better life, much sooner and usually with far less effort and stress if only they’d learned about how to manage their small law firm, sooner. But instead of being proud of themselves for starting today, they beat themselves up for not starting sooner. Don’t do that to yourself. Just, don’t.
Concept 3: Accountability is a good thing.
Most people (not just most lawyers) have very little experience with real accountability in their life. This is because most people are going through life trying to get love, security, self-esteem and validation or approval from others. So they’re unwilling to “tell it like it is” for fear of losing love, security, etc.
This is an important concept with some pretty profound implications for your law firm and the rest of your life. So, I’d like to ask you to think about this for a few minutes. When is the last time you believe you had the benefit of knowing someone’s true, unvarnished, most honest & authentic opinion or feedback?
Do you think your staff gives you the 100% truth or can you appreciate why and how their desire to retain their job may cause them to “edit” their feedback to you, even unconsciously?
Do you think your friends give you the 100% truth or can you appreciate why and how their desire to preserve their personal relationship with you could sometimes cause them to hold back or avoid subjects they know you are particularly sensitive about?
Do you think your family always tells it you like it is or can you respect the fact that as much as they no doubt love you and want the best for you, they also have to live with you and let’s face it sometimes people who really need to hear the truth are the same ones who are working the hardest to avoid hearing or facing up to it.
Before creating How To Manage A Small Law Firm, I spent a few years doing consulting work for a very small professional services management, strategy and marketing firm. Our typical client was a mid-sized law firm with at least 25 lawyers and staff, a full time in-house COO, CFO and a “managing partner” who basically didn’t practice law but instead functioned in the role of CEO for the firm. Our clients were amongst some of the highest profit per equity partner firms in the country with gross revenues ranging from twenty to more than one hundred million dollars. Our “base” fee usually started at $100,000 per year and it was very common to structure an additional matching performance fee. In other words, each client was worth more than two hundred thousand dollars to us, we usually went in with a three year engagement and we only had a handful of clients around the country at any given time. If you’re paying attention you may notice that I went far out of my way to avoid the sort of problems which are inherent in that kind of business model. Chief amongst them, it was terrifying to tell the unvarnished honest truth about when, where, why and just how far their head was up their own ass. It’s not easy to sit down with a client who represented more than 10% of your annual revenues and tell them the truth they desperately need to hear when they’re desperately trying to avoid hearing it.
That’s what I love about the unique business model that is How To Manage A Small Law Firm. And I believe it’s part of our “secret sauce”.
You see, your retainer fee is only a small fraction of our monthly revenues. What’s more, it’s quite expensive for us to recruit, train and manage each of the amazing professionals on my team with whom you’ll be interfacing on a weekly basis as the outside CEO, COO and/or CFO of your law firm. And not to put too fine of a point on this, but it’s a lot harder for me to replace a member of my team than it is to replace any ten of our Members.
So, it’s not just a matter of principles, and ethics and professionalism that my team knows I will always have their back so long as they give our members their most honest truthful feedback, assessments, recommendations and advice. The success of my business depends on my team to tell you the truth, even if (and when) it truly pisses you off to hear that truth. Because the only place where we can help you make your business better is in a place I like to call “reality”.
Of course, I’m not saying we never make mistakes. We definitely make mistakes. It would be a huge mistake to try and pretend we could be growing law firms the way we do with the legendarily-impressive results we routinely get without making our fair share of mistakes. And when we make a mistake you are not only welcomed but you are encouraged and you are expected to speak-up and let us know when you believe we have made a mistake so we can own-up and make things right.
The point of all of this is to give you the assurances I’d want to have if I was you to know unequivocally that my team knows their jobs will be in serious jeopardy if they fail to give you their best honest feedback, not if you get upset by it.
Put another way, my team and I are not here to be your friends. We are here to help you achieve things with your law firm that no-one else can help you achieve. But we could end up being the best friends you ever had if our objective feedback, honest advice and even painful accountability comes together to help you transform your law firm and your life for the better.
Again, welcome to the membership! I look forward to helping you grow your firm.
RJon
P.S. By the way, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to email Scott Whitaker. He’s the Community Manager and is here to serve you. You can email him at ScottWhitaker@howtomanage.com.
RJon Robins
Founder of How to Manage a Small Law Firm