More than 500 Members of How To MANAGE a Small Law Firm who engage our “Hands-On” services, began our relationship by travelling from around the Country to attend a live Discovery Day to learn all about how and why our services work and to conduct their full due diligence.
Afterwards, more than 85% of those whose applications we accept, elect to engage our services and have my team step-in and function as their outside fractional CEO, COO and/or CFO to take charge of those parts of their law firm’s business for them.
We then run them through a 12 week intensive telephone based “crash course” which regularly produces growth in the range of 50-100% but those percentages have a lot to do with the condition we find them in and some other factors that we go into during the Discovery Day but which are too complicated to go into here, and really besides the point right now.
After their 12 week crash course Members get assigned to their outside fractional CEO, COO and/or CFO depending what was decided in the diagnostic at the end of the Discovery Day.
They’ll then “unpack” the business plans and budgets they built-out as part of the crash course and begin meeting with their CEO every week whose responsibility it is to be sure that our members:
☑️ Have a plan that makes sense and which is intelligently engineered to help the law firm achieve the owner’s financial, personal and professional goals;
☑️ Have a forward-looking-budget and easy to understand financial controls that predict problems before problems appear on their doorstep;
☑️ Conduct a monthly deep-dive-diagnostic into each of the 7 Main Parts of the law firm to ensure each part is working, that they’re all working-together and make minor adjustments as needed.
☑️ That the firm’s book keeper, accountant or staff (or the owner may have to do this him/herself every week in the beginning) is logging the firm’s key performance “leading indicators” into their dashboard, which is a handy proprietary tool we developed for just this purpose.
☑️ Conduct weekly performance evaluations and serve as both a sounding board, confidant, a business strategy collaborator, a task master, a coach, an accountability partner and very likely the only person in the law firm owner’s life who can and will call “bullshit” when (not if) we as business owners get scared, make excuses, hide-out or confuse ourselves to avoid making tough calls.
When a law firm’s gross revenues are below about $250,000 we typically recommend only a CEO. By the time the firm reaches about $250,000 it’s usually time to add-on an outside/fractional COO. And when the firm is grossing about $500,000 per year (about $10,000 per week) our outside/fractional CFO services become a necessity for sanity because now the nickels & dimes are really starting to add-up and the cost of not having anyone in the role of CFO is just too great.
But like I said above, we are at capacity with a waiting list. So rather than turn people away we decided to create an “All Digital” version of what we do so we can help more people, like you! And we are hoping (expecting, really) that you in turn will pay it forward in some way by using your newfound or improved success to help more clients to have a better life, too.
By the way, our Members who engage How To MANAGE a Small Law Firm to provide the C-Suite services I’ve described above, also attend a Live Quarterly Meeting at no additional charge. So if you’re wondering where so many of the lessons, tools, checklists, templates, and practical solutions are coming from which you will gain access to when you register below, the answer is threefold:
1) We have a whole team of experienced law office management professionals. In addition to everything I learned as a Small Law Practice Management Advisor with The Florida Bar’s LOMAS office we have been continuing to test, refine, update and develop in response to the needs of our 500+ Members…all different kinds of tools and resources to help them build and manage a better law firm.
So when you register below it’s almost as if you are hiring a full team of experienced professionals to produce practical tools and proven resources to help you with the management of your law firm.
If you value your own time at anywhere close to let’s just say $300/hour and you pick-up and implement one tool per month that will more than pay for your full month membership!;
2) Our Live Quarterly Meetings are HIGHLY-SUBSTANTIVE. Each quarter we focus on a different aspect of starting, marketing, selling, staffing, financial controls and plenty of work on the “inner game” of success. We’ve been hosting these Live Quarterly Meetings for all our members every quarter since 2010. About 70% of our Members attend any given LQM.
About a third of our Members bring their spouse or significant-other. About 10% even bring their children to enroll them in our “Kids Entrepreneur Club” where their children (ages 3-13) get to learn all about how to run a successful business so that when they grow-up they won’t have to struggle like their parents (we) did.
This ought to tell you something very positive about the high-quality of these meetings and the practical value our 500+ Members get by being there, bringing those lessons back to their offices and implementing them for ongoing growth and improvement every quarter.
If you consider yourself to be a person with a lot of value stored-up inside of yourself and you learn even just one single lesson each month by watching or listening in your car to these lessons then this alone could be worth thousands of dollars for you each month which is way-more than the small monthly subscription you’ll invest in for yourself and your future.
☑️ One way is to give yourself a self-guided-tour and seek-out solutions to whatever law firm management & growth challenges are on the “front burner” each month for you.
☑️ Some subscribers prefer to just open the book in the middle and see where that leads them. It’s not like it’s going to hurt you to improve any part of your business so there’s no harm in taking this approach.
☑️ And in response to many requests, we have also created recommended curriculum. Each curriculum leads you through a series of lessons and exercises in order with assignments and all the necessary tools you’ll need to make meaningful progress and see tangible improvements in different parts of your law firm each quarter.
The point is, you’ll get access to all of this. If you lead a horse to clear, fresh water and the horse doesn’t drink you have to conclude that either the horse is content with its current situation or else the horse is stupid. Obviously you’re not a horse, so this analogy is imperfect. But seriously, you will have to go out of your way to not get thousands of dollars of value just from this part of the subscription alone!
3) From time to time and usually only in response to requests from our Members we host special telephone, webinar and live workshops around the Country. Some of these special events get recorded. And some of those recordings will be part of your subscription. Keep in mind that some of these extra workshops command a fee of up to $7,500 to participate in, live. Admittedly you won’t get access to all of them but even if you got access to just one of them and by listening and learning from that workshop it unlocked an extra six figures in your law firm that would be pretty cool, don’t you think?
You will get all of that and more. LOTS MORE. Not least of which is a private-discussion-forum where you can post your practical law firm management questions and get answers. Real answers. With reference to real tools and resources you will have at your command. And for your convenience and protection, no whiners or complainers are allowed on this discussion forum! We’re all about helping you take action and get results.
Oh, and you’ll also be able to call-in during regularly scheduled office hours and for a live lesson each month that will be conducted by me or a subject-matter-expert member of my team with live Q & A so you can get answers to your most important questions.
This Might Not Be For You.
The truth is, it's not for everybody. Not everyone likes our “style”. I used to have a full closet of beautiful Brooks Brothers Suits. Some people prefer a more “buttoned-up” approach and I don’t even own a suit or a tie anymore.
Not everyone feels comfortable with our vocabulary. When we see bullshit we are going to call bullshit. When something is royally fucked-up, we’re going to show you where, why and how royally fucked-up it is and how to fix it.
Not everyone is ready to be held accountable. Some people prefer their excuses and their long and very boring stories for why their life and their law firm suck but back in 2003 things were different and blah, blah, blah. We say “Take All Your Excuses And Shove Them Up Your Ass”. Because in life you can have your excuses, or you can produce positive & profitable results…not both. And at the end of the day your kids don’t give a shit about your excuses, they only want to know why mom or dad wasn’t there for them or if your body was there why wasn’t your mind and your spirit?!?!
And not everyone is comfortable or emotionally ready to step-up and “be” the owner of a highly-successful law firm. Because let’s face it, when you’re the misunderstood underdog owner of a struggling law firm it’s always easy to find other struggling lawyers to commiserate with. But once you rise up from that hole and begin climbing the ladder of success you’re going to find out the painful way that many of your so-called “friends” don’t like you so much anymore because your positive results deny them their excuses, and they don’t like that. So they’ll have to find ways to tear you down to make themselves feel better. Ask me how I know this if we ever meet.
So yes, I wish I could tell you that this will definitely work for every law firm under the sun, but that's not the case. But that’s not because this “could” work for every law firm under the sun. Law firms are relatively simple businesses to run. They “turn around” quickly, they’re highly profitable if run right and they can be a lot of fun to own in part because of how predictable the business-side of the firm can be if you learn how to manage a small law firm.
The reason this definitely won’t work for every law firm is because not every lawyer who owns every struggling law firm is ready, willing or emotionally capable of stepping-up and becoming the person he or she needs to be to have a highly successful law firm. But if you are, then this could be something great for you and your family.
