217: How to Build a Law Firm That Runs Without You with President of Business Design Corporation, Michael Mills

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01] The Tribal Method of Training is talking. Just follow me. Do what I do. Studies show that when you train someone with the tribal method of training, they retain 18%, less than 20% of what you're telling them. And that's why you have to tell them over and over again. And that's not only frustrating and exhausting, but it's incredibly time consuming.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_01] If you have a documented procedure and an easy way to find that documented procedure, you train to that procedure and you say, this is how you do this. Then you do this. Then you do this. Then you do this. Does that make sense? And the person says, yeah, I got it. And they know exactly where to get that process as a backup tomorrow when they have to try doing it again. So training on the fly, the tribal method of training, it doesn't work.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome to the Ten Golden Rules Growth Strategies for Law Firms Podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of Ten Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_02] Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whatever time this webinar finds you, welcome to the Ten Golden Rules, Growth Strategies for Law Firms webinar and podcast series. We've got a great guest today, Michael Mills, who you'll meet in about two minutes. And I just want to start out with a quick summary here, tell you what we're going to talk about today.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_02] Okay, so the topic is how to build a law firm that runs without you and frankly, how to build a business that runs without you, how to build the team, the systems and the freedom to step out of the day to day. And this is as relevant for your law firm as it is for my marketing company. And I saw Michael speak at a conference and immediately grabbed his card and booked a interview for a podcast. And of course, this content is so good that we want to bring it to you in this video format.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_02] So let me tell you quickly about Ten Golden Rules. And we say we are a growth strategy for law firms company. And there's three parts to how we help our clients. The first part we call attract. And largely, that is the Google business today. Sure, ChatGPT is growing like crazy. And there's lots of other vehicles, social media. But for most of our clients, 90% of their traffic is still coming from Google.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_02] 90% of their clicks to their website. And we really try and focus on phone calls. So 90% of their phone calls are coming from Google and Google Maps and Google AI and Google SEO. And the second piece we call convert. So we have a couple different technology products that help our clients convert those calls and convert those leads into actual clients.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_02] The first one is an AI tool that listens to the calls and coaches their intake team on how they're performing and how they're working from a sales perspective. The second tool we call TGR Boomerang. It's like the little Australian toy behind my shoulder. If you throw it out, throw a boomerang out, it comes back to you.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_02] And for any of the phone calls our clients miss or for sometimes people hear the Google recording on an LSA call, on a Google screen call, and they hang up. And anytime somebody fills out a form on their website, we call it TGR Boomerang. And Boomerang grabs the name and the phone number and immediately texts it to the intake team so they can call them right back. So the first piece is about getting more traffic to the client's call center and website.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_02] The second piece helps them convert those calls into signed clients. And the third piece is called five-star operations. And we have a couple different products and processes that help our clients get more Google reviews and get more referrals. And a big part of that is just staying top of mind with your clients, newsletters and social media. And then we have a couple proprietary products we've built to help our clients get those five-star Google reviews.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_02] But today is really about the five-star operations that let you run a law firm very, very smoothly, very, very efficiently. That's going to make your employees happy, make your clients happy and get you the five-star Google reviews. Because, you know, I've seen it very, very clearly where one client runs a very systematized business-like operation.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_02] One client gets about the same business traffic but has a lot of system problems. And the first firm will sign like 80 clients in a month. The second firm will only sign 20 clients in a month. Now, at 10 Golden Rules, we're running on the EOS operating system. Many folks have probably heard of the book Traction. And the things I love about EOS is it's a simplified system that our leadership team understands clearly.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_02] And we can communicate clearly to our entire staff. So now we have a leadership team. The leadership team has weekly what are called L10 meetings. It's on the EOS agenda. We use a software called 90. And each of our leadership team has a meeting with their group, with their team.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02] And they have an L10 meeting every week where we go through the systems and processes and procedures and review all of our clients and develop new products and services with a very systematized system. We have a scorecard that gives us the key data in every meeting. And we've built a series of what we call SOPs, standard operating procedures, which is downloaded into our software that we use called ClickUp. It's a project management software.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02] Now, all of this has been a blessing for me as a business owner because one of the premises of how to build a law firm that runs without you is that you don't have to be in every meeting. You don't have to run the day-to-day. You don't have to answer every question. So our implementation of EOS has been a blessing for me over the last two, two and a half years. So today, Michael is going to talk about a system you all can implement. He is a fan of EOS. He's a former e-myth integrator.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_02] But he's going to show you how to develop these systems and how to really implement them. Let me talk about myself for two minutes. As I said, my name is Jay Berkowitz. Our company is 10 Golden Rules. And we are a trusted partner, growth partner for law firms all across the country. I've written five books. These two were Amazon bestsellers. And our YouTube channel has over 1.3 million YouTube views.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_02] So if you like this content today, please go, first of all, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please click the subscribe button. Click the like button on this video. But there's tons of great content on things like local search, pay-per-click, SEO, EOS. The six parts of Google, you see a bunch of them here. Tons of great content at 10 Golden Rules.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_02] Just search 10 Golden Rules on YouTube or click the link on 10goldenrules.com. One of those videos is a case study with my friend and client, Jeff McDonald, who's now over 200 personal injury cases a month. So that's a great case study to watch. And these are some of our clients in different practice areas across the country. We're very proud to say we made the Inc. 5000 this year for the second consecutive year.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_02] Last point, we run a great annual conference called TGR Live, Growth Strategies for Law Firms. It's in this beautiful location at the Opel Grand Hotel on the beach in Delray Beach, Florida. Delray is right in between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale over Palm Beach and Boca Raton. It's a beautiful location. And we have an amazing conference. And what I do is I curate all the best speakers that I see. I go and speak at a lot of conferences all year. And we get amazing speakers.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_02] And we have an amazing fun time where everybody gets to interact and network and meet everybody. So without further ado, I'll introduce Michael. Michael, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules podcast webinar series.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it. You know, and you said something there, which I love. When we talk about systematizing a business, a lot of people just think about the owner and creating a business without you. But you mentioned employees. And we'll be talking a little bit about that. You also mentioned that I was an E-Myth consultant at one point. And yes, I was. For 17 years, we delivered the E-Myth Mastery Program to hundreds and hundreds of different businesses in all different industries.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01] One of the things Michael Gerber says is it's important to create a game worth playing. And this is really apropos for employees. Because, you know, if you're hiring employees today and those employees are in their late 20s, early 30s, they embrace change. They will leave. You go through all the process of recruiting, hiring, and training. And then you, two, three years later, they leave. Not because necessarily you've got a not a very much fun company to work for.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_01] But, you know, it's they just embrace change. But if you can create a game worth playing, if you can create a company where employees think, wow, you know, Jay's a great guy to work for. I really like working here. It's a great game. Well, you're going to keep your employees longer. And that's really valuable. So one of the things around creating a process-dependent business. I want to ask you a question around that.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Just to clarify two things. Number one is, as I understand it, when you make it easy for people to understand their job, when they have really good training, when they have really good systems, when there's not constant things breaking and frustrations and things not working out, obviously that reduces frustration and it lets people enjoy the work. But the second thing you said is make it a game.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_02] Do you mean like actually gamifying it and having contests and stuff or just make it fun?

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_01] Make it fun. So you talked about in your presentation the importance of L10 meetings. So one of the reasons most people start businesses, obviously, is to make a lot of money, to get control, freedom, and all that stuff. But another great reason is that you care about people. And as a leader in an organization, you can mentor people. So you can be like a really great coach. So by making it a game worth playing, I'm not necessarily saying you gamify anything, although that's a good idea.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_01] The whole concept of gamifying has come out in the last seven or eight years. And Gerber wrote his book in the 70s, I think. So before the whole internet was invented. So there was no gamifying back then. But you could gamify stuff. And we do encourage that. But by creating a game worth playing, I just mean that you've got a company where people want to be. They appreciate you. They appreciate their manager if it's not you. They appreciate the work they do. The work they do is gratifying, satisfying.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01] It's clear what their expectations are. That's a game worth playing. The other thing that I was going to say you could get started, but one last thing I'll say, because I don't really cover this in the presentation. A lot of times you have a great employee and they burn out because you are just asking them to do more, asking them to do more, asking them to do more. You're a growing firm. And they get frustrated.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_01] And they don't see their path in the organization because it's just John who does everything. And John is a great employee. But what we're going to talk about today is creating positions. And every position has a responsibility. And John fills the position. So you'll see when I talk about this, there's no box on your org chart that says John. There are boxes like intake. There are boxes like case manager, boxes paralegal.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_01] And you have people filling these boxes. That is their responsibility. And if you can structure your organization with positions and each position has accountability, responsibilities, key performance indicators, and people fill those boxes, then people know what their job is. And people can see where they can grow in the organization. And they don't burn out.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_01] Even if you're a growing company and you don't have case managers and legal assistants and paralegals, you still want to have those three positions. And John might fill those three positions, but at least he knows he's going to be getting out of them at some point in the future, if that makes sense. A thousand percent. Okay. So let's get started. Hold on a second. I'm going to share my screen.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_02] I was explaining exactly that to someone yesterday. I remember reading it in E-Myth that one of the first things you do, and this guy was just starting a business and having tremendous success, but he was doing everything. I said, the first thing you do in the book E-Myth is you create an organizational chart. And you put yourself in all the boxes, but you understand what the boxes are.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_02] Then you start hiring some fractional employees to fill the roles, and then you have to build systems so that when you train people, there's an actual checklist and a training system. Exactly. That's great. So I'll turn it over to you.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_01] And also, in this day of AI, now you can actually create AI agents. And an AI agent becomes a box on your org chart. So I've been creating an AI marketing agent, for example, in my company, and I literally have a box on my org chart that says AI marketing agent. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So thank you for that introduction, Jay. And I want to begin by making an assumption.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_01] For example, Jay recommended or Jay spoke about the book Traction. You probably don't need another person telling you that your law firm needs processes. You've probably read Traction. Maybe you've read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Maybe your coach has told you to document processes. You may have already created a bunch of SOPs, checklists, training videos, and folders full of procedures.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_01] And, oh, and by the way, I'm going to use, just to make this super simple, I'm going to use the word SOPs, procedures, systems. They all mean the same thing. A set of instructions that are going to be used to tell someone how to do something. So the question is not, do I need SOPs? The question is, how?

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_01] How do I turn all of that documentation, all these SOPs, into a firm that actually uses them consistently without all these important questions coming back to you or key people in the organization? So that's really what I want to show you today is how do you create a process-dependent business? And something I'm going to say a couple of times today, documentation creates potential.

[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_01] It's implementation that creates value. Because if you don't implement all the documentation, what's the point, right? Okay, so to begin, let me introduce you to David. David started his law firm about eight years ago. At first, it was just David and an assistant, but he was doing everything. He was answering the phones. He was working with clients. He handled the legal work. He put out all the fires. He was really good. So the firm grows. And today, he has attorneys. He's got intake staff. He's got case managers, paralegals.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_01] Revenue's grown into the millions. And from the outside, it looks like a success story. But behind the thing, behind the scenes, things aren't as good as they seem. You know, he started his firm so he could be in control, so he could make lots of money, so he could really enjoy what he loved doing, so he could have some freedom. But now things are, like, barely on the verge of control. He's still having to handle every unusual situation.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01] Customer complaints end up with him having to resolve them. And now, by the way, there are many, many more of them. He's working longer hours than ever before, but not making nearly enough money to justify that additional time, the additional stress, the loss of freedom. He's built a bigger firm, but he's not having as much fun anymore. Things are too dependent on him or maybe some key people in his firm. He's not in a position where the firm can operate without him being at the center.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_01] And when he thinks about taking a vacation, he goes, oh, man, it's going to take me so much time to get everything in place so I can get away. And then there's so much that I have to fix when I get back. Is it even worth it? I thought, David thought, that when growing a firm would eventually make the firm easier to run. I'd get all these new employees.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01] But what he finds now is that every new case, every new employee adds more pressure to the structure that was already dependent on him. More cases creates more handoffs. More handoffs creates more opportunities for inconsistency. More people creates more management. And because the firm never had an effective operating system or an effective management system, more management means more questions, more work for David.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_01] So growth, this is a key point, does not cure owner dependency. It magnifies it. When you're a small firm, you can manage with weak systems by working really hard through what I like to call heroic effort. But a growing firm can't. So here's the frustrating part is that David tried to systematize the firm. He wrote SOPs. He recorded videos. He made checklists. But some of his processes are in Google Drive.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_01] Some are in Word. Some are still in people's heads or on people's computers. They invested months and months documenting the business. And yet, six months later, same questions are still being asked. Same mistakes are still being made. And if one of his employees actually searches for an SOP, they sometimes say, we don't do it this way anymore. So they ask David or they ask another key employee or they just wing it. The firm has documentation, but no one uses it.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_01] So they're still very much people dependent. Now, this isn't because David fails to understand books like the E-Myth or Traction. It's because those books and most coaching programs, they talk to you about the importance and value of systems, why systems matter, why processes matter. But they don't tell you how. They don't tell you how to get your firm systematized.

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_01] They don't provide a practical implementation method for getting the firm to process dependency. So essentially what I like to say is that David was given an SOP writing project, not a business systemization plan. And his SOP writing project turned his business into SOP chaos. His processes are in all different formats, stored all over the place, and nobody knows where to find them.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_01] So yes, it's critical to get your SOPs written, but they need to be accessible. They need to be used, and they need to stay current. So what David really needed was what I like to call a business systemization plan. He also needed a business systemization tool. We'll talk a little bit about that. But he really needed a system for training, for enrolling, and motivating his employees to follow their processes, and for managing and holding his team accountable to the expectations of those SOPs.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_01] And he needed a better tool, something better than Microsoft Word or Google Docs. He needed a tool that actually integrated his people, his processes, and his positions to make it easier for them to find and follow SOPs. So I said in a previous slide, I'll say it again, I'll probably say it at the end too, documentation creates potential. But it's the implementation of that documentation that creates the value, that creates the consistency,

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_01] and the confidence that the firm can actually get done what it needs to get done without having to rely on key people. So what happens with most businesses when they try to systematize? They fail because of probably three traps. Trap number one is they're trying to document everything. Michael Gerber even says this, you've got to document everything in the business. But that kind of a project is totally overwhelming.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_01] There are so many things that are happening in the firm. Trust me when I tell you this, because I've been doing this for 25 years. You do not need to document everything in your business. I've never seen a business with everything that's documented. Even me. And I'm a total process nerd. I don't have everything documented in my business. But then what do you document? So you need to focus on the processes that will make the biggest difference. And I'm going to walk through how to do that in a moment.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01] So that's trap one, trying to document everything. Trap two is thinking that if I write a process and store it somewhere, that's implementation. Putting a process in a folder on Google Drive does not make it easy to find and follow. And if processes are too difficult to locate, is anybody ever going to use them? Trap number three is making implementation an employee's responsibility. Implementation is a management responsibility.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_01] Managers, they must use processes to train and manage employees. They use processes to coach employees. And they look at the processes to improve them. And then they roll out the innovations, the improvement. When a documented SOP exists, employees are required to follow it. And I'm going to talk about this in a minute. It's called a non-negotiable. No ifs, ands, or buts.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_01] You got to know that employees, they don't show up planning to ignore your SOPs. Under pressure, they're going to fall back on habit. And if a manager is always answering a repeated question, instead of coaching the employee back to the process, retraining the process, bringing the employee back to the process.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_01] If they're always answering the question, rescuing that employee, the manager is unintentionally reinforcing people dependency, not process dependency. So, systemizing a business is what I like to call transforming a firm from owner dependency to process dependency.

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_01] And put simply, it just means getting the right people doing the right work the right way without the firm having depend on any key individuals to remember how something works. I mean, the right people doing the right work the right way. Now, that does not mean that you don't need to get good people. Gerber, in his book, gives you this impression that you could just walk down the street and get anybody off the street to do work. I don't concur. I think you've got to get great people.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01] But even great people cannot tame the chaos without clear processes supporting them. Your people are not necessarily failing your firm. I think it's your firm's systems are failing its people. And that's one of the things that comes back to this idea of creating a game worth playing. Because if you've got great processes to support your people, you're creating a game worth playing. You're creating a place where people want to work. So, this goal is operational independence.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_01] And really, it's a firm capable of operating successfully whether or not you are there. And I got to believe that whenever anybody starts a business, they weren't intending to become more stressed, more out of control, working longer hours. Their goal was to create operational independence where you could be calling in for the numbers from the British Virgin Islands. It's like a metaphor I like to use. So, we've been doing this for 20 years.

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_01] And as Jay said, we were master certified e-myth consultants delivering Michael Gerber's e-myth mastery program. But in that time, we developed this roadmap and it's five steps. And this is not rocket science. It's simple. It's not that easy. It's simple. So, steps one through four that you see in this five-step plan. Steps one through four are designed to create what I like to call the foundation of your process-dependent business.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_01] Step five turns that foundation into the way the firm is actually managed. Now, when we first get started working with a client, almost everyone asks me, Hey, Mike, how long is it going to take to get my business systematized? It's kind of a difficult question, but the truth is there are kind of two parts. The first part, which is creating the foundation, these first four steps, that should only take you, well, less than 10 hours, six, seven, or eight hours.

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_01] We have a program where I walk people through this whole project in seven hours. Everything's done. The foundation is built. The processes aren't written, but the foundation is built for that process-dependent business. Step five, the second part, that's ongoing. You and your team will be writing, editing, and archiving processes for the life of the firm. That doesn't mean you're always doing that. It just means that you've got a culture of processes in the organization.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_01] So I'm going to walk you through this roadmap, not as theory, but basically as a sequence that you should be able to follow. Step one is vision. Almost everyone I work with says to me when I start this program, what's vision got to do with systemizing my business? Vision is a key part of any business development plan. And what we're really creating here is a business development plan. We're just focused on processes. Gerber said, if you don't know where you're going, how are you ever going to get there?

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_01] So you've got to get this out of your head and you've got to get it into a process that can be used in your onboarding, training, managing employees. So your vision becomes a really important part of several of your processes, including your strategic planning process. What does your firm look like three years from now? You don't have to go out too far. Let's say three years. What does your firm look like three years from now? What practice areas will you serve? How many cases will you have? How many attorneys?

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_01] How many locations will you be managing? What should clients consistently experience? What role do you want to play? What's your life going to be like? And what are the values, your core values that are non-negotiable as you grow? Now, if you've already done this, if you've gone through the exercise of writing down your vision, I always ask my new clients, do you have a vision? They say, oh yeah, we've done that. I said, can you send it to me? And they look at me like, I don't know where it is.

[00:27:06] [SPEAKER_01] So if you've already gone through the exercise of writing down your vision, which is a great exercise, getting it out of your head, getting it onto paper, how are you using it? Where is it? When was the last time you actually looked at it? Because a vision is not inspirational wallpaper. It's an important and valuable step to take. You cannot systematize toward a future that you've never defined. And a vision without processes underneath to support it is,

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_01] well, it's kind of like just wishful thinking. Next, your vision, and Jay, you mentioned this a moment ago, your vision will help you define the draft of your future organizational chart. We recommend that when you create your org chart, you create the org chart of your future business. The positions in your firm and the critical processes the future firm will require, which brings us to step two, drafting that organizational chart of the future business.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_01] So think of all the different positions in your firm, all the critical processes that the future firm will need. And if you've got your vision documented, it's so much easier to see this firm that you intend to build. Now, in this step, you are not merely drawing boxes around the people you currently employ. The boxes, by the way, need to represent positions, not people, not personalities. There's no position called Sarah or Bob.

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_01] You've got intake specialist, case manager, paralegal, client care coordinator, and so on. Each position needs a purpose, needs a person, needs responsibilities, and each position needs a reporting relationship and measurable results or KPIs. Essentially, think of your org chart as an x-ray of the firm. It can expose missing positions, overlapping responsibilities, weak reporting relationships,

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_01] places where too much still depends on the owner or any individual in the firm. But it also becomes a hiring plan. It becomes a framework for training and accountability. So your org chart ends up being this really important dynamic tool that will help you strategically grow your firm. Who do you hire next? What are the responsibilities of that positions? What are your expectations of someone hired for that position?

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_01] How long will it take you and how much will it cost you to get that new employee up to speed so that you can start earning a return on your investment in that new hire? So this is the value of an org chart of your future firm. Hey, Michael, can I jump in on that with a question?

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. You mentioned the org chart. We did a similar exercise in EOS and they call it an accountability chart. Yes. And you kind of said that too. You said there's no Fred or Jane or any names in those boxes. Right. So what we did is we went through this exercise with our implementer, which is an EOS coach, and developed an accountability chart is what they call it.

[00:30:12] [SPEAKER_02] And each box has an accountability for a position. The things that they're responsible for, and you mentioned something that's great, there's measurable results in each area or KPIs, key performance indicators. What we call it, what EOS calls it, is everybody owns a number. So everybody's responsible for one or two data points that goes into the scorecard at the end of the week

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_02] that tracks how we're performing in each of those areas. So do you want to explain, you know, what's the difference between an org chart and an accountability chart or a job responsibility chart like this where you take the names off the chart?

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. There's actually no difference between an accountability chart and an org chart. And when I'm working with an EOS client, I call this an accountability chart. And what we do is if, and maybe we could show this later, but if you click on any one of these positions, at the very top of the positions, there's a section called core accountabilities, the three to five core accountabilities, which describe the like key responsibilities for someone in this position. But we go a little deeper than that, Jay,

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01] because, and what you'll see in the slides coming up, as you start defining all of your processes, you will link processes to boxes on your accountability chart. And that becomes a list of actual, a set of systems or processes or SOPs that specific individual needs to follow. So that it just makes it easier to find your SOP, your instructions. So there's really no difference between an accountability chart and an org chart.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_01] Maybe one difference is that you'll notice that on this chart here, EOS kind of has placeholders for key functionality. So you've got managing and sales, operations, finance, admin, and HR. In an accountability chart, those aren't actually people. Those are kind of departments. And underneath it, you've got the position in each department. And then if you click on any one of the positions, you would get five, I usually say five core accountabilities for someone hired for that role.

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_01] And then below that, you're going to have a complete list of processes. So we just take it a step further in that sense. Does that answer your question? That's great. Step three. So once you've got your vision down, once you've got your org chart down, step number three is simply naming or identifying all of the processes that you think you need. In this step, you're not writing processes, you're just naming them. So think of it as it's kind of like coming up

[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_01] with a table of contents for your firm's playbook for all of the different processes in your business. Gerber, by the way, I think I said, I may have said this earlier, Gerber says that you got to write processes for everything in the business. You do not need to write processes for everything in your business. The key word here is critical. What are the things that happen in the business that if someone makes a mistake or if something falls through the cracks, if something like that happens, it has an actual impact on the business.

[00:33:23] [SPEAKER_01] These are critical processes. These are processes that really do need to be written and implemented. It's not everything in the business. So vision, work chart, process identification, just list all of your processes. That said, sometimes when I ask clients, what are all the processes in your business? It's kind of like a deer in the headlights question. They kind of go, ah, I don't know. So what we recommend when you're thinking about your processes

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_01] is think of your company as having four key functions. There are really only four things that happen in a business. The first key function, and I'm going to start with sales and marketing and go counterclockwise around this little graph that you're seeing. The first key function, you got to get clients. So these are all of your sales and marketing processes. Things like new client intake, referral development, managing your marketing campaign.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_01] So the way you want to start naming your processes is you say, well, how do we get new clients? Well, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. Again, we're not asking you at this point to write how you do intake. You just want to name, well, we've got an intake process. We've got a referral development process. The second key function, so you've got sales and marketing. The second key function, all of the processes, all of the things that you do for your clients,

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_01] all of the processes that are directly related to your clients. So think client fulfillment processes, customer service processes, all of the things that you do to deliver on that promise that you made in the sales process. So initial client calls, discovery, gathering evidence and medical bills, hearings, settlement, lien resolution, litigation, all those things. So you just list all those things. Then coming up on the right side of this slide,

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_01] you've got all of the processes for what I like to call finance, admin, HR and IT. So all of the behind the scenes processes, collecting money, paying bills, payroll, interviewing, hiring, firing. These are almost always all the processes that help support sales and marketing and client fulfillment. So you've got sales and marketing, client fulfillment, finance, admin, HR, IT. And then the final key function right up at the top there, strategy and management.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_01] You've got processes for guiding the business from where you are today to where you want to get to. All of the processes for things like strategic planning, key performance indicator tracking, coaching and management meetings, like Jay, you recommended the L10 meeting. That's a management process. Now, just remember, you're not trying to create processes at this step. You're just trying to get a list of all the processes that need to be written and writing them happens in a later step.

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_01] When you're thinking about what processes you need, think about once you've gone through this list and maybe ask some questions like, are there recurring questions that keep coming up? Are there missed handoffs that happen? Where do we experience costly mistakes? Where do we have inconsistent case handling, training challenges? Is there work that might be trapped in one person's head?

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_01] So again, you do not need an SOP for every tiny task, but you need them for the work where inconsistency has consequences. So we definitely recommend thinking of these four key functions. It really helps you identify your processes. And I do actually have a list of processes that a law firm needs, which is a great tool. You can ask me at the end of the presentation for that list if you're interested. So vision org chart process identification.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_01] Remember in process identification, we're just naming the processes. Step four is where you start bringing all of this together. And this SOP library, the org chart and the vision, it actually starts to become a business operating system. In this step, you will actually link the processes that you've identified. And Jay, this is where the, we go a little bit deeper on the accountability chart. You start linking the processes that you've identified in step three to the roles or the boxes

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_01] on your org chart, the roles that need them. And if you think about this, as you link each process to a role, you are automatically creating what I like to call a position specific operating manual, a list of all of the processes that'll be used to train a new employee hired for that role. Now, you don't necessarily need a tool to do this there, but there are lots of tools out there. And one of the, just a little bit of a plug for our tool,

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_01] we created a tool called Touchstone. When you have a tool, it just makes it so much easier to do this. So in Touchstone, you click on your org chart or your accountability chart, you click on the position and then you scroll up to the library of processes that you've identified. You put a check mark beside each of the processes that a specific position needs. And as you add those processes to a role on your org chart, you'll begin to see the position specific operating manual actually getting built.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_01] So every critical process is linked to the position responsible for using it. And once you've assigned all of your processes to those roles on your org chart, you'll add your employees to those roles. So you'll actually link each employee to one or more boxes on your org chart. And this is kind of what makes the Touchstone application unique is that it's this integration of processes, positions, and people. So that when one of your employees,

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_01] your intake sales rep, for example, when they log into Touchstone, Touchstone knows which position they fill. And they will see all of the processes they need. They don't have to be hunting for the instructions they need to do their job. And clicking on any one of those processes brings up all the tools they need for training and accountability. So it could be a document. It could be a video. It could be a checklist. Whatever they need to get the job done the way it needs to be done.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_01] So now everything that has to happen in the firm, all of your processes listed on the left side of the graphic here, they've been assigned to a box on your org chart. And each one of those boxes on your org chart has been assigned to an employee. And by the way, as a growing firm, if you created an accountability chart or an org chart of your future organization, sometimes the firm isn't big enough to generate enough revenue

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01] to hire someone full-time for that position. So sometimes employees are in multiple boxes on your org chart. But again, remember, there is no box called Sarah. There's a box called Intake Specialists and there's maybe a box called Customer Care Specialists. And Sarah's in both of those boxes. But Sarah's function is to realize that in the future, she's going to be in one of those boxes and out of the other box. And her job is to work on that box that she's going to be getting out of and put processes

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01] in that box so that when a person is hired for that box, Sarah gets out of the box and leaves behind all those processes that'll be used to train that new employee. So each of these boxes on your org chart has been assigned to an employee. And I like to call this complete functional accountability. Every critical process that happens in your firm has now been assigned to an employee because all the processes are assigned to a box and all the boxes are assigned to people.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_01] So anyone in your firm can easily and quickly find their processes rather than having to search through pages and pages of unrelated files in a company handbook. And a manager, think of this, a manager can click on the role of their reporting employee and have a completely documented training plan. It's really a powerful place to be. And this is that those first four steps of the five-step roadmap taking

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_01] less than 10 hours should take six, seven, eight hours to do this. It's a very quick project.

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_02] And Mike, if you're a small company and they're not hiring your firm yet or using your software, the simplified way of doing it is could you just have this all on a spreadsheet that links to every process and make sure the employee gets trained on the process?

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, that's a good point, Jay. So if you're a small firm, you're not intending to grow, you don't need a tool. You can follow this exact same process but you don't need a tool. But you should have a business systemization plan and you can follow this plan by listening to this presentation again. And we also have an e-book that you can use. I wrote an e-book on this but you're absolutely right. If you're a small organization, one or two people with no intention of getting much bigger,

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_01] just write your processes in Google Docs so that they can be shared and create job descriptions and hyperlink them to those Google Docs. Absolutely, you don't need a process but if you're a small firm with two or three employees and your intention is to grow, it is way easier to start organizing things when you are smaller than it is to organize things when you've got 12, 15 employees. If you're going

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_01] to onboard a new employee and you onboard them with processes, so let's say you're a small firm with two or three employees and you're about to hire a new intake manager, if you train that employee with processes, then they understand that processes are a part of your firm and it's much easier than if you wait until you have 12 employees and then try to convince people that they need to use processes. Again, I'll talk a little bit about that

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_01] in a couple of slides because processes, you need to motivate your employees to follow processes and then you have to make them non-negotiable. It has to be part of your culture of your company. Does that answer your question, Jay? Yeah, it does.

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_02] You might stop share for one sec because I know this is kind of a critical juncture, right? You said you do the four steps and then you implement at step five. I just want to say some things that you said in a different way so maybe it brings it home for people and share my understanding. So having read E-Myth four or five times, there's the classic story of I always call it Annie's Pie Shop. But I think Sarah's Pie Shop. Sarah, yeah. Yeah. The story as I recall it, Sarah's aunt taught her to make these delicious pies

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_02] and she makes the pies exactly the way her aunt taught her and every night she cleans the place down to a sparkle and every day she makes these delicious pies and it's this big success and the people start coming and they keep coming. And now they're lined up out the door. And so Sarah is now exhausted. She's been going seven days a week for far too long although sales are great, profits great. She's got to hire an employee because she can't keep up with the demand

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_02] and the lines are out the door every day. But she had never documented any of these processes. So she tried to train this person on the fly and it was a complete disaster. She couldn't teach her all the years that her aunt taught her how to make the pies. She couldn't teach her how to do the cleaning. She didn't have the time and the systems and the documentation to make it happen. So when she got this magical e-myth consultant or read the book e-myth and documented

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_02] everything the next time she had her employee it was great and then the firm went on to tremendous success opened multiple locations bought an orchard etc. etc. etc. So what I see here is that you're talking about exactly that that if you're a small two or three person firm with no expectations to grow you don't really need to document this the same way but it's that demarcation point where you're bringing on another employee and another employee and another employee

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_02] and for me the magic and I think this was in the EOS books is as a manager you can have up to seven direct reports and whether it's five or whether it's ten and depending what they're doing you definitely lose the ability to sort of hands-on train those people and hands-on supervise those people and hands-on answer their questions and that was for me that elevation point and where we went from doing some self-implementation

[00:46:08] [SPEAKER_02] of some e-myth stuff and some scaling up stuff and some Rockefeller habits some EOS to really doing picking one system and doing a full-fledged implementation where now we were up to 13 or 14 employees we needed a leadership team and I needed to get out of a bunch of the roles and hand that off to awesome people who could make it happen so is that what you're talking about here like step one's vision step two

[00:46:38] [SPEAKER_02] was that org chart slash accountability chart figuring out each of the roles and who's in the roles step three process identification and not figuring out the important process not all the process and step four the linking and figuring out what we need to train for each job so that when you bring people on there's a clear delineation of what their job is what you need to train them on so is that a good summary of where we're at before we're going to step five

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_01] yeah yeah perfect and I'll just add a few things to that too you know you talked about Sarah training her first employee and she didn't have time to train her if you don't have documented processes you're doing what we call the tribal method of training the tribal method of training is talking just follow me do what I do studies show that when you train someone with the tribal method of training they retain 18% less than 20% of what you're telling them and that's why

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_01] you have to tell them over and over again and that's not only frustrating and exhausting but it's incredibly time consuming if you have a documented procedure and an easy way to find that documented procedure you train to that procedure and you say this is how you do this then you do this then you do this then you do this does that make sense and the person says yeah I got it and they know exactly where to get that process as a backup tomorrow when they have to try doing it again

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_01] so training on the fly the tribal method of training it doesn't work and Sarah basically hated her company she had created this pie baking company she loved baking pies she made these incredible pies and the people that bought her pies complimented her to the point where the line is out the door and she her job sucks at that point she's like going this is terrible she doesn't even want to bake pies anymore so she no longer liked what she was doing because of

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_01] the stress and time and she tried to hire these people and it didn't work another key point that you made was management and one of the things that we look at is one-to-one relationships and managing if you're trying to manage one person or if you're hiring a position that has that just manages one person on your org chart you kind of want to think about that because management that's a skill so if you're hiring a lawyer and you expect your lawyer to manage a paralegal

[00:49:03] [SPEAKER_01] there are two types of relationships on an org chart there's what we call the working relationship so the paralegal does work for the lawyer there are also management relationships so who hires that person who fires that person who coaches and mentors that person they work for the attorney but they're managed by somebody else in the firm and that's a really important distinction to make when you're onboarding someone because again if you had to hire an attorney that has management skills that's really

[00:49:32] [SPEAKER_01] hard to get so I mean hiring is hard enough so you just want to make sure that you get people that fit the box that you're hiring for we had a client for example who had a receptionist she was a single mom and she did her all of her books so she was really good with QuickBooks and she was kind of really good with graphics she knew Adobe and so my client when he first hired her she did

[00:50:02] [SPEAKER_01] all three we'll call her Sarah Sarah was doing the bookkeeping she was doing reception and she was doing graphic design well she ended up leaving the firm and he had to get another employee and he said well I'm just going to hire someone like Sarah I'm going to hire another Sarah there's no way you can't find someone who does bookkeeping reception and graphic design that is impossible you need a bookkeeper you need a receptionist and you need someone who does graphic

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_01] design because a bookkeeper we like to call that heads down work you know they're attentive to details they're not very good talking to people if you've ever talked to a bookkeeper and a receptionist is what kind of like heads up work they're really good on the fly they don't follow processes very well by the way neither do sales people but they're not very good with detail this person happened to be both so I was trying to convince him you need two people and he

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_01] said no no no I'll just get a bookkeeper and so he hired this bookkeeper and a couple weeks later I called him for one of our meeting and this woman answered the phone and she kind of said reliable energy concepts who may ask who's calling and I said oh hi it's Michael Mills I have a meeting with Larry I'm his consultant is he available may I ask what this is in reference to I just told you I'm his consultant we have a meeting twice a month can I meet with them and one moment please

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_01] and so two weeks went by and I called back again for our meeting reliable energy concept may I help you and I said hi Georgia or whatever her name was and I said it's Michael calling and I've got my meeting with Larry and she goes may I ask who's calling what's this about and I'm just like pulling my hair out and Larry got on the phone I said you cannot have this woman answering your phones anymore you've got to find someone and he did eventually

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_01] understand that these are two very distinct roles there is no person called Sarah there's bookkeeping and reception and

[00:52:09] [SPEAKER_02] most important job we do as consultants is not even you know like technically assign your job description fixing the phones and a lot of times we do that too like we as a matter of fact we're on with a client today and they have their Google leads their local service ads leads going into an answering machine press one if you're a new client press two it's taking 25 seconds for the person to get through you've got to answer those LSA calls in 15 seconds we're just like hey take those

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_02] calls from the LSA leads put them automatically to number one to a live person who picks up the phone and problem solved all right so I think we understand where we're at we've done the vision done the accountability chart you've done the process identification you figured out which jobs linked to which roles and now we're ready for step number five the all important back

[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_01] the one thing I'll say before we go to step number five is in terms of management I mentioned one-on-one management also it's really difficult to manage more than 10 people if you're managing 15 25 30 people you are not having management meetings you're just putting out fires so that's another thing to think about and that's where you start creating I

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_01] managing four paralegals and then you've got some good management processes that each of those paralegals can have coaching meetings with and training meetings with those people so that was just another key concept there okay let me share my screen again Jay all important step number five yeah step number five so we got these first four steps down they're not here this is step five so remember as Jay said vision or

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_01] again as I said at the very beginning this is very much a project and you should be able to get this done in less than 10 hours five six seven hours step five is when the process writing and the rollout happens now at this point you might have a very extensive list of processes that were identified or named in step three a whole bunch of these processes now remember you don't

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_01] do I really need a process for this you know you might say opening and closing the office I don't think so I don't think you need a process for that anything that can be taught to someone in three or four or five minutes you do not need a process for that and I've got some other rules and guidelines for when you need to write a process but the most important thing is look for critical processes processes where if someone makes a mistake it has an impact on the firm and then you can

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_01] literally just draw a line through all the processes that you don't need to write so the first thing is just to identify the fluff from the critical processes and then you want to determine which of the critical processes are the

[00:55:54] [SPEAKER_01] what have been linked to that virtual intake assistant because if you're about to hire someone for that position wouldn't it be great if all of those processes were documented to make onboarding and training faster and to make holding them accountable to their KPIs and the way they need to do things easier so your focus when you're writing processes is usually on

[00:56:29] [SPEAKER_01] you're going to filter that list down to critical things then you're going to filter it down to the most important processes that need to be written as soon as possible so you're going to be thinking of writing five or six or seven or most ten processes at a time so if you have

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_01] five or six or seven or ten processes to focus on you will assign someone to write them and that's what this graphic is talking about then you'll write them then you'll field test them basically you'll test them you'll see if everything that you documented wasn't right did I get everything there and then you'll make tiny little changes and then you will roll it out to the people who need it and then you repeat it's just a rinse and repeat write

[00:57:30] [SPEAKER_01] test implement repeat and by the way one of the things that we say is to the extent that you write more and more content in an SOP is to the extent that no one's ever going to read it so you want to keep them super simple you take all of your existing SOPs and we organize them and link them up and everything for you

[00:58:00] [SPEAKER_01] most of the SOPs that I get are impossible to follow so this does not necessarily mean that you write an SOP and you expect your employee to just read that SOP and get it there is a training step here so you walk through an SOP with a new employee and you talk about those exceptions those ifs if this happens and you tell stories all that story all those stories all that content is done in training they don't need it to follow

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_01] the process afterwards and also remember that a great deal of understanding happens by doing so they learn on the job and they grow in their position so the one through four that is very much a project this one is not a one time project writing field testing rolling out this is ongoing this becomes your managing your manager

[00:59:00] [SPEAKER_01] operating rhythm because your processes will continue changing as your company learns when a new employee discovers a better way you want to make sure that process gets updated that better way is added to the process and now you have a new standard that gets rolled out to the team so optimization is not an event it's a habit it's part of your culture and that is how your business gets a little smarter every month every quarter every year

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_01] management so this is really really critical there is a behavioral change that has to happen in your company if you want this roadmap of creating a process dependent business to stick managers manage processes and coach their reporting employees most managers in an organization were promoted because they were really good at what they did not because anyone taught them how to manage most managers

[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_01] don't even know how to manage themselves and they're not given any management tools when we go through that key function for strategy and management I have to lead most of my clients through processes the L10 meeting is a management process but we've got this really great one-on-one coaching process in our library of processes that people can download that teaches them how to manage people how they coach people so most managers were never given any management tools they

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_01] say things like just make sure the client is happy or keep those cases moving forward those are what I like to call intentions they're not here is our communication process our client communication process and these are the required touch points this is how they are recorded this is the result we expect now the manager can train from that process they can observe the

[01:00:59] [SPEAKER_01] work they can recognize what was done correctly they can identify where coaching is needed and they can improve the standard if the employee comes up with a better way so SOPs they do not implement themselves managers implement SOPs again I think I said this earlier your employees just don't show up to ignore their processes managers really need to use the processes for training they use them for coaching they hold their reporting employees

[01:01:29] [SPEAKER_01] accountable to the things as described in the SOP and there are specific standards and key performance indicators in all of those SOPs that are expected if the employee follows if you've got an intake manager for example that's following your intake process and you've got a process for doing intakes well there's going to be a ratio of if I take 10 intake calls I've got 7 new clients or whatever that is

[01:01:58] [SPEAKER_01] because if you follow the process you'll have a number well if one of your people is not achieving that number you want to bring them back to the process what are you doing do you remember that we have a process for this let's go through and retrain you on the process because if they're not achieving their number one of three things is happening they either they're just ignoring the process or they do know the process exists but they didn't understand the process they misunderstood

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_01] it or maybe they don't even know the process exists so you've got to bring them back to the process the other side of that coin is your ratio of say new client cases to intake calls is let's say it's six and you've got this rock star who's doing eight well you want to find out what they're doing because they have probably imperceptively innovated the

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_01] update the process and roll it out to the team so everybody's getting eight out of ten so these SOPs they have specific standards and the KPIs are expected if the employee follows the process okay so getting your employees to follow the process requires two principles that I want to speak to in the next two slides one is motivation and the next slide you'll see is non negotiables motivation creates buy-in you want to

[01:03:29] [SPEAKER_01] put yourself in the employee's position and answer the question what's in it for me so get into their shoes and say if I'm an employee why should I follow processes a lot of a

[01:03:59] [SPEAKER_01] good get fire me or they're thinking oh Mike's just talking to some dumb consultant and if I just ignore him it'll all go away because he never follows through on this so you want to motivate people you want to give them some context what's in it for me why should I follow processes again I've got a document on this too but a good process gives employees clarity it reduces the fear of doing something wrong it eliminated it basically eliminates repeated

[01:04:29] [SPEAKER_01] guesswork and rework and having to redo stuff and your manager getting upset with you because you didn't do it right it creates fairness because everyone is held to the same standard it makes training faster so if you're going through training if you remember when you were younger and someone was training you and you were like just panicked on how am I going to remember all this tomorrow and if you've got processes you've got everything to fall back on if you're training from the processes it gives employees greater independence because they don't have to wait for someone to give them the

[01:04:59] [SPEAKER_01] answers if they've forgotten something they can always go back to the process and it gives them a clearer path chaos is going to burn out your rock stars clear processes they help the whole team meet expectations the other thing I like to say here is that you are not requiring every person on your team to

[01:05:28] [SPEAKER_01] read an SOP every time they need to do something that's absurd they need to read the process to learn it they learn the process once they've learned the process they're good to go until they're no longer achieving those KPIs or they're not following the process you walk past them and you hear them saying something or they're doing something or failing to do something and if they're not achieving expectations or they're not following the process it's the manager's responsibility to

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_01] they're going to be ignored a non negotiable is a standard that your firm refuses to compromise even when people are busy and a non negotiable could be if a process exists we use it you learn it you use it personal preference does not quietly replace the firm's standards so managers train and onboard from these documented processes all these documented processes and if a

[01:06:40] [SPEAKER_01] process is inaccurate or inefficient and an employee sees that they are expected to help improve it fix it not skip it every process in your business needs to actually have an owner who's responsible for keeping it

[01:09:08] [SPEAKER_01] time caseload aging basically all of your process metrics should lead managers back to the work that produces the result so we're winding down here operational independence doesn't necessarily mean you stop coming into the office I use this a lot of

[01:09:38] [SPEAKER_01] numbers from the British Virgin Islands but operational independence basically means you now have choice because some owners they just want to spend more time with the family they want to make more money maybe some want to travel some want to focus less on lawyering and more on marketing or strategy or mentoring case situation one of my clients he loves marketing creating videos and all the metrics around marketing he's kind of a marketing nerd

[01:10:08] [SPEAKER_01] and he cherry-picks a few cases every year to work on the legal work that he genuinely enjoys but basically he doesn't consider himself a lawyer anymore he's the marketing guru so you can do what you love to do in the firm without everything having to depend on you so freedom is not necessarily doing less it is choosing how you use your time instead of allowing the next fire or the next interruption or the next emergency

[01:10:36] [SPEAKER_01] choose for you choose for you it also creates incredible value for your business your business is going to be worth multiple times more if you have processes and management management systems in place a buyer or a successor or a leadership team is far more than a firm which has defined positions implemented processes capable

[01:11:03] [SPEAKER_01] capable managers and consistent training and measurable standards far more valuable than a firm whose future depends on on a couple of key people so a business worth owning is also a business someone else is more likely to buy in the future so last slide back to david david did not need another binder he didn't need another folder he didn't need a couple hundred more sops he needed a business systemization plan

[01:11:32] [SPEAKER_01] and he needed a business systemization tool that connected his processes to the positions responsible for using them to the employees filling those positions and he needed his managers to train coach measure and improve from those processes and once that happens knowledge stops living in the people and the firm begins to remember what it has learned new employees they benefit they inherit this new knowledge and they benefit from that knowledge

[01:12:01] [SPEAKER_01] work becomes more consistent managers have something concrete to manage and the team is running the day-to-day operations and the owner is no longer the operating system the owner can focus on what they truly want to focus on could be strategy could be marketing could be calling in for the numbers from the British Virgin Islands we're going to open things up for any questions now but if you recognize that your firm if you recognize your firm and in any of what i've talked about today there are a couple of ways that you can take some action

[01:12:31] [SPEAKER_01] and i hope it's okay jay if i give a couple of calls to action yeah one option you can start a free trial of Touchstone and i'll put these links you can if you've got a phone you can actually capture these qr codes and go to those links but i'll put these links or jay if you've got those links can if you could or maybe elizabeth if she's still with us they could put those links the urls the actual urls in the uh in the chat box but i'll put them in as we if i don't see them there but so one option is you can start a free trial of touch zone you don't need a credit card

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_01] you don't need anything you just download a new registration and you'll get our ebook the five-step roadmap to operational independence and then you can use that roadmap in the software to actually begin self-implementing the system in your firm another option is schedule a short zoom call with me i am not a high-pressure salesperson i love talking about this as you can probably tell i'm a complete nerd around processes but we can look at where owner dependency is showing up in your firm what you already have documented

[01:13:29] [SPEAKER_01] what parts of the roadmap might be missing i can answer your questions i can show you how touchstone works so if you scan either of these qr codes here you'll either set up a meeting with me or you can go right to our website and grab a free copy whichever path fits for you just remember that documentation creates potential and implementation creates the value and operational independence creates that choice of

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_02] doing what you want to do so thank you jay i love michael so we yeah no i leave this up on the screen and i'll ask you some questions i've got a list and then if anyone wants to put a question in the chat or the q a or on linkedin if you're watching live on linkedin and uh and by the way if you're if you're watching this after the fact put the question in youtube and uh or linkedin and michael and i will answer the questions over time so the first question i had this is an interesting one that's come up for

[01:14:22] [SPEAKER_02] us recently you know we went from one person who did seo and one person was account manager then we had two then we had three then we had four and the question i have is we always had this model where the more senior person was the manager in the group but as we got busier and busier the managers have pushed back a little bit and said i can't handle a full account load and also manage the other folks in the

[01:14:50] [SPEAKER_02] group what is the determination of when do you break someone off should the model be like they're only handling four or five accounts instead of a full 10 or 15 account load or at what point is a company big enough and the job big enough that you need a full-time manager yeah great question um

[01:15:11] [SPEAKER_01] well part of that becomes a conversation with that manager because a lot of times what happens is someone will come to you and say i don't have time to do all these things is that true what i usually say in that situation is okay i get it because it might be a time management issue you know it might be that they're just not using their time effectively it might be that they're overwhelmed that they've

[01:15:40] [SPEAKER_01] got too much stuff and yes you you can't really expect a person who's managing five people to have the same caseload or workload as someone who's not managing other people but let's say that you have a manager and by the way a lot of people make their the person who does the technical work the best they make them managers without ever giving them any management process without even talking to the

[01:16:06] [SPEAKER_01] person about what management is because sometimes someone's in a management position when they shouldn't be they don't even want to be but it's ego that got them there or maybe it's it's salary that got them there or something like that so to answer your question i would always start with listening to them and we encourage these one-on-one meetings and then i would probably say let's try something again we've got a great little time management process jay i just want you to track

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_01] what are you doing all day long are you constantly being interrupted that's a great question that's a great idea yeah yeah and then the other thing is remember they if they're if your management processes if you've got a one-on-one coaching process where they're meeting on a one-on-one basis with with an employee say um with each of their reporting employees let's say they've got five reporting employees and you've got a one-on-one process where they're meeting twice a month for

[01:17:04] [SPEAKER_01] half an hour well you can look at those however two 30 minutes time so an hour that's five hours a month so they have five hours a month of management management processes so take enough cases that they don't have because those five hours they've got to be managing that's their management and it might be a little bit more than that especially if they're writing processes and if they're and if

[01:17:30] [SPEAKER_01] they're innovating processes and rolling things up to the team so just be respectful of the additional management time that it's taking for them to do their job as a manager and then reduce the tactical time of of how many intake calls they do or how many depositions they do or whatever it is that they're doing

[01:17:49] [SPEAKER_02] next one comes from jackie on linkedin you say right right out the first three to four processes what is it what does it look like how do you document the processes great well how do you document

[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_01] them remember when i said to the extent that you write more and more content about the processes to the extent that no one's ever going to read them so keep them simple step by step so basically what you do is you go how does it start what is the trigger so let's say it's the paralegal gets an the intake calls happen that's kind of a sales and marketing process

[01:18:31] [SPEAKER_01] say again sorry the phone rings the phone rings that's so for an intake person the phone rings literally you could say that so you you could say the phone rings and and when we talk about writing a process we talk about every step in the process should be an action sentence begin with an adverb i'm sorry begin with a verb so pick up the phone pick up is a verb if you can't

[01:18:58] [SPEAKER_01] start a task or a step in the system with a verb chances are it might not be a step in the system it's more of a standard make sure that you answer the phone within before it rings to three rings well i guess suppose you could write that into a standard pick up the phone before three rings but keep it as simple as that so start with the trigger point how does it start so write that down

[01:19:21] [SPEAKER_01] and then say and then what happens and so you answer the phone the phone rings answer the phone with the greeting i would actually recommend scripting that greeting thank you for calling the touchstone law firm office my name is michael mills how may i help you because if everybody's answering the phone the exact same way then there's a consistency there when when someone calls

[01:19:48] [SPEAKER_01] back and michael gerber always used to love that consistency and then what happens and then what happens and then what happens and for to answer the question keep as simple as possible until it gets to the to a major next step and then it's a new system it's a new process does that answer

[01:20:07] [SPEAKER_02] her question yeah that's great okay um next question how do you make toast that's perfect it's a trick question but um you know and i want to explain it so there's um great one of the top 10 10 talks of all time i think is how to make toast and this guy gets a group of people and says can you document how to make toast and then he goes on to explain use yellow stickies and write down each step in

[01:20:31] [SPEAKER_02] the process and is that a really good way to do this kind of documentation yeah actually there's there

[01:20:40] [SPEAKER_01] we can actually rise up a little bit above that but yeah that's a great way to do it in fact i was on stage and a few years ago and i said okay i want to try an experiment i'd never done this before i want to try an experiment and i had a slide up behind me that said how to make coffee or how to make tea or something like that and i i followed my process for making tea which is a little bit complicated

[01:21:06] [SPEAKER_01] because i steeped the pot and then i put the tea in and then i pour water in the tea and i pour that off and i do the second tea so i said okay i'm going to walk you through this process for making tea and i'm going to talk it through and i didn't put it up on the board i just talked about it and then i said okay is there anybody in the audience who'd like to come back up in here and tell me my process for making tea i just told it to you and someone put up their hand and they came up on stage

[01:21:31] [SPEAKER_01] and i gave them the microphone and then i put up the slide of everything i just said and it was hysterical to hear them you said it before they probably got 18 of it right exactly exactly and they started doing the way they make tea not the way i make tea and that's personal preference that

[01:21:49] [SPEAKER_02] is not how i need tea made there's a philosophy in eos that everybody should have a number on the score they should own a number on the scorecard and you talked a little bit about you know writing really good kpis and having measurable results in each role so how do you figure out what are those kpis how do you make up you know a lot of times our numbers are just kind of like

[01:22:15] [SPEAKER_02] ambi-pambi they don't move that much every week or like our web traffic we'll have 1700 one week and 2700 the next week and then 1700 visitors the next week and i'm just trying to figure out like how do you get those numbers to really matter and how do you tie those numbers to someone in a box

[01:22:32] [SPEAKER_01] in the accountability term well web traffic is a little bit different jay because there's so much happening uh with ai and google and all these things that you can that you can't example but yeah yeah but no and that's a good example because i think marketing leads yeah so basically what you want to do is you want to talk with your existing team let's say you have no processes you have no numbers i would talk let's say intake again i would talk with my intake team if i have one or two people

[01:22:59] [SPEAKER_01] or five people or whatever and i would sit down those sticky notes i would put them up on what do you do this happens and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens and what do you say and then i would i would document that and then i would roll that out to the team and track how does that does that work and if it works i would capture that number because if everybody is doing the exact same thing they should all be getting the same number because the process is being followed

[01:23:27] [SPEAKER_01] do this do this if a plus b plus c equals f you're going to get f every time that's your kpi because you're following a process if f is not the right number at least you've got something now that you can innovate maybe we should change this and change this and change this and because a plus b plus c equals f if we change this did a plus b plus innovation plus c equal f plus plus or something

[01:23:55] [SPEAKER_02] like that does that address it yeah that's great last one you said you don't have to read an sop every time you do something once they learn how to do it so talk through that a little bit you know they're going to have this process they're going to have every step you're going to train them on it then i guess they're going to read it and walk through it do it themselves and you re-coach them a little bit and after three or four times you kind of learn how to do things right yeah exactly that's it

[01:24:22] [SPEAKER_01] it's important that you tell your team that you don't need to look at this sop every time you want to do it because you're going to have when you roll this out you're going to have some people in the organization that are going to be cynics that are going to say i don't need no stinking systems i've been doing this for 10 years i don't need a process they don't if they're if they're doing it the way you need them to do it and they're achieving your expectations you they don't need a process but

[01:24:49] [SPEAKER_01] the firm needs the process the firm needs the process for hiring new people in those positions so employees just need to know that you're not really asking them to necessarily do something differently and do more work you're just wanting consistency in the firm well here's some good news

[01:25:07] [SPEAKER_02] that one thing's true almost every employee always says oh we need to hire another person like i'm too busy and so that that's your your best rationale for well you're gonna have to document everything so you can train them when they come on board so they have the job confidence and they do a really good job documenting everything mike this was a lot of fun any last words for the audience no

[01:25:31] [SPEAKER_01] no that's i really appreciate you taking it i mean i just really appreciate you having me on on your show jay thank you for that it's been great working with you and if i can be of any assistance to anybody out there please just use that link to to find me and i'd be happy to have a conversation

[01:25:47] [SPEAKER_02] awesome well thanks everybody and you can find mike at his links find me at 10goldenrules.com or jay berkowitz anywhere on the socials and have a great rest of your day okay thanks jay thanks buddy

[01:26:01] [SPEAKER_01] bye-bye now

[01:26:04] [SPEAKER_00] thank you for listening to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast please send questions and comments to podcast at 10goldenrules.com that is podcast at t-e-n goldenrules.com