Jan. 9, 2025

125: Streamlining Law Firm Accounts Receivable with Matt Darner from Collbox

125: Streamlining Law Firm Accounts Receivable with Matt Darner from Collbox

Are you looking for some strategies to stabilize your law firm’s cash flow? In this episode, I sit down with Matt Darner, co-founder of Collbox, to uncover the secrets to mastering accounts receivable and build a financially sustainable practice. Matt shared valuable insights into the importance of cash flow management and collections for law firms. We explored how Collbox specializes in helping law firms streamline their accounts receivable processes by handling overdue payment follow-ups. Matt emphasized that having a defined accounts receivable policy, leveraging technology, and focusing on client-friendly payment solutions are game-changers for financial health and business sustainability.

Matt also highlighted the power of niching down, both in his own business and as advice for law firms. By focusing solely on law firms, Collbox has been able to deliver unparalleled value through tailored solutions and technology partnerships with platforms like Clio. This episode is a must-listen if you’re looking to improve your firm’s cash flow, reduce financial stress, and grow your business strategically. Tune in to discover actionable tips and hear Matt’s top strategies for creating a healthy, sustainable law practice.

Key Topics

  • 02:40 Matt Darner describes his wild ride in the accounts receivable and debt collection space over the past decade.
  • 02:10 His business partner and co-founder, who handles engineering, and their complementary roles.
  • 03:23 Their initial focus on helping small businesses with collections and their eventual niche in serving law firms.
  • 03:53 Their partnerships with tech companies like Clio and Smoke Ball, which significantly improved their business.
  • 05:41 Developed a passion for solving problems and consulting.
  • 06:22 Collbox focuses exclusively on law firms, having tripled their revenue after integrating with Clio.
  • 06:37 The importance of cash flow and accounts receivable for any business.
  • 06:55 Collbox takes over past-due bill follow-up for law firms, executing a well-thought-out accounts receivable workflow.
  • 07:44 The human touch in their services, hiring trained accounts receivable professionals.
  • 08:10 The challenges of chasing after various industries and the importance of niching down.
  • 09:32 Their success of integrating with practice management systems and the significant impact on their revenue.
  • 11:24 The pressure to say yes to any potential client and the learning curve in understanding different industries.
  • 13:02 The importance of not losing the human touch in collections and maintaining client relationships.
  • 11:19 The top problems Collbox solves, focusing on cash flow and accounts receivable.
  • 16:29 Taking charge early in my sales career by creating my own presentations and resources, even clashing with marketing, to ensure I could deliver results quickly and effectively.
  • 17:63 Working closely with business owners to tackle cash flow challenges, helping them improve receivables processes and avoid the financial pitfalls that cripple so many small and mid-sized businesses.
  • 20:02 Top strategies for improving cash flow and collections, starting with defining and documenting an accounts receivable policy.
  • 21:35 The importance of having a clear timeline for actions when bills go past due.
  • 22:46 Reiterates the importance of having a documented accounts receivable policy and a clear process.
  • 23:13 The importance of defining what are you, what are your leverage points, and what are your escalation points.
  • 24:48 Leveraging technology to streamline the process and make it easier for clients to pay.
  • 25:34 Setting clear cost expectations and making payment options as convenient as possible for clients.
  • 26:10 Leverage modern practice management technology and flexible payment solutions, like financing options to reduce financial risk for your firm.
  • 28:32 Hire the right person for the job, freeing up attorneys to focus on higher-value tasks.
  • 29:15 Personal productivity technique of time boxing and using his calendar to block off time for work.
  • 30:10 Efforts to create more content and his struggle with being camera shy.

Resources Mentioned

Books:

  1. Traction
  2. Hacking Growth
  3. The Challenger Sale

Influential Figures and Content:

  1. Alex Hormozi - Entrepreneurial content creator.

Technology and Software:

  1. CollBox
  2. Clio
  3. Smokeball

Financing Solutions:

  1. Affirm
  2. LawPay 

About Matt Darner:

Matt Darner is a co-founder and the Vice President of Business Development at Collbox, a platform designed to help businesses get paid for their hard work. With a background in guiding industries to leverage data for growth, Matt has been instrumental in helping businesses streamline operations and reclaim time from repetitive tasks. As a seasoned revenue leader, he understands the challenges of scaling a company and is driven by a passion for helping businesses succeed. Through CollBox, Matt combines technology with a personal touch, ensuring that companies are compensated for their efforts while simplifying their financial processes. His expertise in business development and innovation has made him a trusted partner for businesses seeking to grow efficiently and get paid faster.

About Jay Berkowitz:

Jay Berkowitz is a digital marketing strategist with decades of experience in the industry. As the CEO of Ten Golden Rules, he has helped countless law firms and businesses harness the power of the internet to achieve remarkable growth and visibility. Jay is also a renowned keynote speaker and author, sharing his expertise at various industry events and publications worldwide.

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Transcript
Matt Darner:

So defining and documenting your accounts receivable policy. And the simplest version of that to me is, what am I going to do when blank happens, right? If it goes past due, what am I going to do? But not just in the in the broadest sense, but at day one past due, what am I going to do at day 10 past due? What am I going to do day 3045, that's how AR works, or needs to work. It's just a series of actions against the timeline. That's all it is, right? So don't like overthink it, don't stress about it, but you write it down. And then from every every practice area is different. But you have to define like, what are you what are your leverage points, and what are your escalation points, right? So which means leverage is kind of when am I going to stop working? Am I going to withdraw from the case?



IMFLF Intro:

Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing 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 10 golden rules. Jay Berkowitz,



Jay Berkowitz:

good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Great guest today. Matt Darner from call box, is going to teach us all about cash flow collections. We'll get to Matt in two seconds. Just want to thank you for being here. Quick thing, if you listen to our shows, if you like them, you can help us a little bit by subscribing on YouTube. If you watch and listen on YouTube, or if you're on iTunes or Spotify. Subscribe to the show if you really like us. Give us a five star rating. It helps a lot. It helps us get great guests. Because a lot of the superstar folks, they're publicity people, are going to look at how many people subscribe to our show, whatnot. So take a minute do that favor for me. And without further ado. Matt donner, welcome to the 10 golden rules podcast.



Matt Darner:

Awesome. It's great to be here, Jay. I really appreciate the chance to come on.



Jay Berkowitz:

So I teased a little bit. You're going to teach us all about cash flow and collections, but tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up with this great startup and got a great success story. So go ahead. Yeah,



Matt Darner:

it's a wild ride. I half jokingly say in any like classes I teach, in events I go to where we're going to talk about everyone's favorite topic, which is accounts receivable and debt collection and cash flow. You could just see, at least we get some laughs out of it, right? I tell people I used to have more hair before the start of this journey. And that is true, but yeah, you know, it's a wild ride. We got started, I guess going on 10 years ago. Now, I'll give you kind of the abridged version, but I'm you might think of me as kind of all things partnerships, kind of the face of the company. Go out and do great stuff, like this episode. I'm lucky to have a wonderful business partner and co founder, who's my best friend, who is also all things engineering. So we make a fun little duo on that. But we got started about 10 years ago, really, actually deep in sort of the collection space. And what I mean by that is we were trying to help small businesses of really any shape and size, before we found our passion and our niche in law firms, send past due collect things to collections, right? We were like a marketplace for finding a good collection agency, which is an even weirder place than I've we've ended up now, but always in the accounts receivable space, always trying to help small to midsize, mid sized businesses grow and get paid for their hard work. And just like any good business story, right? We kind of learned a lot throughout the ups and downs of of running a business. And it was a few years ago now that we really focused in on on serving law firms, helping them get paid for their work. And we found in some technology partners, like Clio and smoke ball, just awesome partnership on the tech side too. And everything just kind of clicked about two years ago. Actually, that way, everything just kind of lined up, and it was like, ah, we should have been here all along. So it's one of those kind of stories, but you got to stick around long enough to just learn the lessons, right? I know a lot of your listeners, as business owners running their firms, have all been through that too, right? We're all on that same train sometimes, right? Like this, the chaos of being business owners,



Jay Berkowitz:

and you skipped right ahead to the company. But where are you from? Where'd you go to school? Tell us a little bit about Matt. Yeah, I'm



Matt Darner:

I like to say the next best thing to an army brat. And what I mean by that is, my dad was in the army, but got out of the army and started working for the federal government and so, but we kept up the moving just as if he was the military. So we just kind of traded at uniforms, I think a little bit. But yeah, I'm originally from the Midwest. I'm from Kansas City, but I've lived all over the place. I've lived in New England. I've lived in El Paso Texas, parts of Florida, at times. I'm now in Austin, Texas, but my background kind of curiously. I'm more of like a nerdy, creative type, but that found his. Way into sales and biz dev. I don't know how I was, like a very nervous, quiet kid in middle school, and then something, some switch flip somewhere, I got into theater, started doing sales right out of university. I went to University of Texas in Dallas, and then I just found my passion in solving problems. I mean, I know that sounds kind of cheesy, like it really kind of does, but I just love consulting, right? I love working with business owners and figuring out what's going on and how can we solve it. I've worked in kind of inventory tracking and asset tracking. I've done some engagement and social stuff as well, and bounced around a few industries, but I'm always most interested when I'm really working with people, like in the driver's seat at a business, and I don't know, I think it was inevitable I had to end up starting a company, because I just couldn't think I'm also wildly unemployable. I need to put my hands into every like, pocket, but like, bucket and pot. I gotta figure out how marketing works. Let's go do this. I'm not a marketer. I know you know exactly how you feel, yeah. But I couldn't help myself, and I made too many people mad. So I think I ended up on the Entrepreneur's Journey ultimately, kind of inevitably.



Jay Berkowitz:

That's great. What are the top problems you'd like to solve problems? What are the top problems? Call box solves for folks?



Matt Darner:

Yeah, the world we live in. We talked about it at the top accounts receivable, cash flow. It really is the lifeblood of any business, right? And I've worked with 1000s of businesses now in this journey, and I don't care what industry or profession you're in, if you're not running a business that's sustainable, and what that means is, right, we bring in more money than we spend. Right? Like we all know this instinctively, but I think when we get caught up in the day to day of running our business, sometimes we lose sight of like we need to know our numbers, right? So finance accounting, particularly cash flow. But call box is whole deal is that we take over all the past due Bill follow up for law firms. So kind of that nitty gritty, the dirty work a lot of people don't really like doing. We could track our time. Hopefully we're doing that religiously and doing well with that. We could dig into tech on that. But a lot of firms really suffer from we do our work, we track our time, we get our bills out the door, and then it's just kind of fingers crossed. Well they'll probably pay right. And then there's not really a great or well defined process and the accounts receivable side after that, and so that's where we come in. Not only help design that and work that into your firm, but really execute it particularly, we've got a whole team of people who do the phone calls like actually pick up the phone and check in on past due bills on behalf of firms. And that's just been it's been a game changer, not just for us, but for the firms we serve as well. Turns out nobody really likes making collections calls go figure, right? So that's kind of where we



Jay Berkowitz:

live, yeah, and you do it exclusively for law firms we do



Matt Darner:

now. Yeah. So I'd say there's some historical clients that have been with us for a long time, or excellent clients, but in terms of who we cater to, who we go after, it's been a few years now that we exclusively like I like to say we only spend our calories trying to better this service for law firms. That's all we do now.



Jay Berkowitz:

So clarity is a good thing, right?



Matt Darner:

The year, we focused in and kind of made the call, it's not to say we're a multi billion dollar company, but we're a lot more successful than we used to be, and things are a lot more comfortable than they used to be, but we were really struggling in the years before we focused in and our first we can talk more about the tech at some point, but we integrate with the practice management systems to see because that is the source of the truth of the billing and we really need that data to do what we do at scale. So as much as we're like in the services space, doing the calls and things like that, there's a huge technology component where what makes us so much more efficient and cost effective in that but one of the things we do is integrate with the practice management system. And the year we integrated with Clio, it was like mid year, I think we launched it in June. We tripled our revenue that year. It's like, Oh, I'll use colorful language maybe another time, but it's, oh, my goodness, I really wish we'd done that a few years further back, right, after all the stress and the roller coaster, and it just blew me away. And since then, we were like, well, that was the ultimate validation, right? We felt it we thought it through, we interviewed, we did a lot of research and talking to firms, but at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, right? You launched it six months in, and really not even a full year, right? Within six months of that, like the back half of that year, we tripled our revenue, and it was insane. So



Jay Berkowitz:

there's riches in the niches, right? Is the expression, and there's so many things that when we started focusing only on law firms, like we'd done digital marketing for 15 years for every industry, and then the last five years, we only do law firms. And there's so many things that you don't realize that's going to come with that. First of all, our team got really good at it because that's all they do. They're not trying to figure out affiliate marketing, or they're not trying to figure out Amazon stores, like they're only trying to get law firms more traffic and more cases. It's pretty simple, right? And for me, like, my life got easier, like I knew which conferences I needed to be at, which book to write next and who to interview on my podcast and what monthly webinar we should do. So if you all haven't figured out your niche, if you're a law firm, you got to figure out a niche. You got to be really good at something, or maybe two things. If you have another partner, like we were talking about earlier, the more you can niche down, the better your life will be. Absolutely tell me a little bit more about the company and how you all service people and who's a good fit for the company?



Matt Darner:

Yeah, so we kind of come by this in an interesting way, right? Every, every startup founder wants to be like, kind of the sexy new startup AI is is exploding right now. We all know that the legal profession is kind of along for the ride too, right? There's been a lot of interesting things that have happened in that space already. I'm excited about that. I actually think there's an interesting role to play for that in the future. What we're working on, no, they're not exclusively. I think the thing that I've observed, and just to circle back very briefly on the niching down, I just want to echo what you said, too, is we were trying to boil the ocean, right? This is classic, can't say no to any dollar that was coming across our radar, because when you're so early in the journey, like, oh, we need money. We got to sell something. We have to be a business, right? And so, I mean, I, and this is in no way to say disparage these businesses. They're incredible professions, but we're talking I was chasing after plumbers, HVAC companies, marketing agencies, right? Content creators, startups and law firms and architects, and it was just like you said, you just I didn't know how to speak their language. And when we think now is kind of obvious in hindsight, but it's the pressure to just say yes to anything that's mildly interested in what you're doing is so great, especially we're a venture backed startup, right? We've taken some investor money at times, and we've been very blessed to have friendly investors. But that's not always the case. I've got some founders I know that are really under the gun right on these things, and they've been really supportive of our journey to figure it out. But yeah, we're chasing kind of our tails. And I always say, like to say we were a mile wide, but only an inch deep, right? We just couldn't speak to anyone with any sort of acknowledgement that we really understood what they were going through. And then, as buyers, like we don't we like to know something's built for us. Like it just makes sense once you really unpack it in terms of, like, how we come by it. Though, as exciting as technology is, we're always looking at efficiencies, but the real root of what we do is the kind of DNA here is to not lose the human touch, right? It's really important to us. And I think the reluctance for a lot of firm owners to engage in a solution of any kind, but particularly when we're talking about money, right, collecting of money or helping in the aid of cash flow is, don't ruin my relationships with my clients. My clients are my everything, like the relationship and so though we have the options in front of us to do way more automation, there's now some interesting stuff to play with on AI. We could have offshored this whole thing and made a lot more money in terms of margins, but we hire people trained in accounts receivable in the US, wherever possible. We actually we have some reps in Mexico as well, because we do some work with immigration firms. They want some Spanish speakers as well, which is great, but by and large, training accounts receivable have that on their resume, great with people that soft touch I jokingly say call boxes like collections with a lowercase c is kind of my little pun or my play on it, because our clients need to know that they can trust us with their best customers, and so what we try to do is mimic, basically, to put it plainly, what a firm should be doing if they had unlimited time and resources and hours in the day with the staff that they have execute a well thought out accounts receivable workflow that is run by someone who understands accounts receivable and can kind of thread the needle between we need to sometimes put pressure on our clients to pay their bills and make sure that we're being healthy as a business while really deeply respecting the relationship, especially those firms who work with consumers, individually, right? We work with all kinds of firms. I see family law, immigration, general type business practices, some real estate, little bit on the estate planning, if we talk probate and things like that, by and large, I'd say people who Bill hourly when don't get paid up front, or at least as a part of their practice, right as a part of their business, have some element of hourly billing. Certainly have accounts receivable. But that's not exclusive either. If you're a flat fee, but you break it up into installments, right? It's you still owed that money, or if credit card payment falls off, we just need to have a safety net for our business to make sure that we're following up on these past two bills with the right balance, right? And so that's who we try to serve. What's



Jay Berkowitz:

your why? What gets. You up in the morning and excites you.



Matt Darner:

I think because I've just, like I was saying a little bit earlier, I've always been so passionate about getting my hands dirty on every part of the business. I'll never forget, this is a little bit of a goofy story, maybe. But you know, one of my earlier sales career, in my earlier my sales career, one of my first jobs, I was working for a higher education startup so technology for universities and colleges. And my job wasn't a huge company. It was kind of a somewhat advanced startup, but probably around 5060, people, good headcount, but not hundreds or 1000s. And I was exclusively on the sales side, but I just needed more resources. I was like, I want to build this presentation. I was going after like, kind of a unique market, and I just started building my own presentations and collateral and like, like, literally, visually, I'm kind of a an artistic person. I get into Photoshop and things I just started building and marketing kept getting mad at me, like, that's not approved. Like, it's not you're not following the brand standard. You're not doing this. I'm, like, you said it would be four months to get me that. I'm sending it today by email, like to this person, I just kind of kept making people upset. So one, I wanted to learn more about businesses, and I've had the good fortune too. In a lot of other roles, I've had to work directly with business owners, and so for me to just see the cool and amazing things that they've built and the great services they've offered to their clients, like law firms do incredible work for their clients, right? They really are making life changing efforts for the clients, and then comparing that, or combining that with just being so interested in the inner workings of these businesses, I don't know. It just became really interesting to me when we got started that have to pull out the stats. But I think every single year, and this is broader than just law firms, but over $100 billion in the is written off as bad debt in the US every single year, right? It's from the IRS. I think it's 125 the last time I looked at it, and it's probably gone up since then, small to mid sized businesses are the backbone of our economy, right? Of our entire existence in the US, and yet they're bleeding out constantly on cash flow. The number one reason for businesses to fail is cash flow, right? We run out of cash, or we kind of get over our skis on expenses, and it's it just blows up in their face, right? They don't have to learn, right? Yeah. And so when you then couple that with what I've learned over the last 10 years is that I've just, again, talked to so many owners when I ask them, What is your accounts receivable policy look like? What's your process? How do we do it? I mean, I'm simplifying it in somewhat kind of being playful here, but a lot of times it's I get my bill out the door and I hope for the best that is the status quo, right? Because some percentage, and it's a good percentage, will pay on time or thereabouts, right? But then it's one of something of a 2030, 40% that do start to delay. We can talk about some really cool stats that Cleo put out last year on this topic for firms, that I think shed a great light on this problem for law firms, and how long it's really taking them to get paid. It jams up everything, right? And I think there's some other things we could talk about, but it's not like our expenses stop just because we stopped getting paid right? Your rent, your mortgage, whatever it is you're in your payroll, and we're talking about your biggest expense, if you have employees, they would riot if they didn't get their paycheck right. You wouldn't have employees for very long. Let me just drag this out. Can you give me net, net 90 terms on paying your paycheck like unacceptable, right? You can't run a business that way, and yet we let clients do that to us, right? And so I think there's just a sort of a backwards thinking that's rooted in a good place. I want to take care of my client. I care for them. I have a big heart. Attorneys are self deprecating a lot of the time, like, Oh, we're thought of as the bad guys and all the jokes that go around. But in this profession, some of the biggest hearts I've run into of all, and I've worked with lots of business types, they really do see what their clients are going through and it and they're trying. They're really trying to help not only do great work, but help them on that side too, but I think unfortunately, at their expense, right? So often, and it hurts their business. So much



Jay Berkowitz:

awesome. So you've got a great list. Oh yeah, top 10 list. And hey, look a guy from 10 golden rules. Gotta love a top 10 list, but Top 10 Strategies for cash flow and collections. So why don't you give us, like, three, three or four of the best ideas?



Matt Darner:

Yeah. So I'm really in this point my journey trying to do more content, more education. For me, it's, of course, we want to grow revenue and these sorts of things. But for me now, I really think it's super important to just share what I've seen on the road, and just not just myself, but also the stories from the law firm owners that I've been working with. And just kind of like trying to, I did this recently, I was telling you before we get started, just to try to consolidate my thinking a little bit right on what are the biggest pitfalls and in the inverse of that, or what are the. They get the best, high leverage Best Practices right that I think firms could implement that would make a meaningful difference right in their cash flow and their I think, translate that to your well being, right, your sanity and running a business, right? I'm right there with you on that right and how hard this is to do. I touched on this a little bit. One thing, I think, is that there just is no policy on accounts receivable. So if you do have past due bill, if you do bill right, and do not get paid up front, whatever version of that is where, if you have accounts receivable, you're putting yourself at risk, right, for cash flow issues. So many industries have AR. I'm not saying AR is your enemy, and having any AR is it's almost a good sign, right? Because if you're on net terms, you have other things. That means you're doing business. You got money coming in through the pipeline, so don't be afraid of it. But defining and documenting your accounts receivable policy, and the simplest version of that to me is, what am I going to do when blank happens, right? If it goes past due, what am I going to do? But not just in the broadest sense, but at day one past due, what am I going to do at day 10 past due, what am I going to do day 3045, that's how AR works, or needs to work. It's just a series of actions against the timeline. That's all it is, right? So don't overthink it. Don't stress about it, but you write it down. Every practice area is different, but you have to define like, what are you what are your leverage points, and what are your escalation points, right? So which means leverage is kind of, when am I going to stop working? Am I going to withdraw from the case? If you're in immigration, we're not going to court to represent you. If you're in family law, similar, right? Or I'm going to file a motion to withdraw, right? But you got to balance that against, are you able to withdraw? If so, for how long? There's so many pieces each practice area needs to just kind of list out what is my leverage as a business, what are they trying to get from me? What service and am I giving to my clients? And then lay that out against the timeline. So documenting it. This is some content we've started to give away. There are great AR workflows out there. You can grab guidelines and templates for this thing, but what I suggest people do is do start there, and then you slowly modify it to your firm right, to your practice area, and your comforts, like it's your business. You do need to make a decision on some of these things, and then make sure you layer out those leverage points. That's number one. I know there's a lot there, but I think that's huge. It's just knowing what you're going to do so that when it happens, you don't have to have the thought or the discussion internally of, well, they're getting kind of long in the tooth. It's a little past due, and then you have a meeting to talk about it. That's such waste, right? For your time? Yeah, I love



Jay Berkowitz:

that simple, right? Write it down. Have a policy because and then follow here's another trick question we get all the time. Some people will be like, we want to pause.



Unknown:

Oh, yeah. Oh man, I bet, yeah. Okay. What



Jay Berkowitz:

exactly does pause me like and you don't want to upset them? Yeah, we've got 30 day cancelation. And



Matt Darner:

right? The why there is so critical and so variable, right? Like, maybe they're having a cash flow crunch, right? That happens a lot, too. It's ironic when they were like, We want to pause, if that ever happens with us, which is rare, thankfully, because we're bringing in money, right? So our ROI, I'm grateful with this opportunity to be able to track our efforts back very clearly to a clear ROI, but yeah, sometimes you're doing amazing work, and then you, like, take a pause, like, what does that mean, right? And you really need to go back into your sales cap a little bit and kind of diagnose and peel back the onion, right? You got to figure out what, what's behind that, what's the pain we're really in, right? So absolutely, let's see. I mean, yeah, because I could throw out a couple other things. I mean, I think technology is sort of another big one a lot. Of course, overwhelmingly, firms are getting onto practice management solutions, great payment options, too. This kind of goes hand in hand. I have these as separate items in the list, leverage technology, right? So much time is wasted just by like hand effort handwriting an email or scheduling reminders and then going and writing those email reminders. There's great technology for that. That's something that our world, we do, but also, like a Clio a smoke ball, there are tons of great practice management solutions out there, especially depending on your practice area, leverage that technology and then plugged into that make sure you're making it as easy as possible for your clients to pay you. I think there's two pieces to unfold from that too, which are be very as clear as you possibly can. And I'm looking at you like hourly billing firms, that kind of family law. I see this happen a lot, but many others too. I don't know the costs are so variable, right? It depends, right? As we get into it, as much as you can, setting clear ranges of cost, estimates of cost, go more conservative. And I don't mean Sorry, I mean to say don't go lower on the number, go higher, right? You want to kind of under promise and over deliver on that one. Right? Rather than the reverse, but setting clear cost expectations, and then how much are you going to pay? When are you going to pay me, and how are you going to pay me? What's available to you as a client, and now with things like, of course, law pay has been around for a long time. Make it easy, credit card, absolutely now we could talk about this is, like the latest kind of revolution I feel like, in the legal and the payment space is financing right, a firm and law pay made a great partnership recently that I think is revolutionizing the ability to finance legal fees, right. And there are other vendors out there too, not to knock them, but this is kind of the big one, right. Law pay go and then after a firm and and went from we can finance handbags too. Wait, we can finance legal fees too. Actually, like, we can find out, pay later, anything. And so I think that's a huge thing to make sure you're up on for your firm too. How are we taking payment? And then are we availing ourselves of some interesting financing opportunities that shift the risk away from us? Because that's the other thing. Is AR, is essentially you being a bank, right? Right? This is all that counter to my interest? Like before, we want you to have AR so you'll find callback. No, I want you to get paid for your work and have a successful business, right? And so, yeah, you gotta think about ways to de risk it for yourself too.



Jay Berkowitz:

All right, so give me one more from the top 10 tips,



Matt Darner:

yeah, so let's see, man, what am I pick? One? Got my list off to the side here. I'm pretty excited about this thing, but I think it's, I guess, for me, just knowing what I've seen and why we exist and how I got here is just make sure that you define that policy. We're leveraging technology kind of making that, that that process easier, like we talked about. Just make sure that someone owns this process inside of your firm, and that needs to not be the attorney, by the way, right? Like your opportunity cost is way too high if you're the one doing this follow up in no other industry does it work this way, right? Think about the last time you went to the doctor, right? And I have my beef with this a little bit too. But if I ask about the cost of something, when I'm talking to my doctor, they have done the ultimate job of this, right? Oh, not really. My thing. I have no idea what it costs. I'm not saying do that, because I am frustrated by that to some degree, but that's the billing department's problem, right? And then the billing department, you go talk to them, they are trained for this. They are wired for it. It is a specific skill set. And so I see a huge trap for firms, because we're all trying to do more with less. We are too. I get it, but if you've got your office manager or your paralegal or your other attorneys or just anyone who didn't say no, but kind of delegated to follow up on your collections, it's probably not working as well as it could be, because they're not doing all of the things in that policy that really need to be done, namely the phone calls. Like that's the big thing, but hire the right person for the job, just like you would choose a new partner or an office administrator. Accounts receivable is a very specific skill set, so it's not even necessarily to say, Go find call box, go, but if you do it yourself, just make sure you've got the right person wired for and they do exist, because that's who we hire. So they exist, and you don't need a tool like us, necessarily, but you do have to find the right person. That's a huge trap that you can fall in, all right?



Jay Berkowitz:

So I didn't prep you with these. Normally, I prep people, but hopefully you listen to a couple of our shows. These are our one liners real quick. Give me some apps or techniques you use for personal productivity. Personal



Matt Darner:

productivity. I like doing time boxing a lot, so I'm a little old school. I definitely use my calendar for that. There are amazing apps for this, but blocking your time, I would say I'm still bad at it, but I'm fighting really hard that I'm easily distractible when it's like, Hey, new thing popped into my inbox. I have to block off time to work on my business just as much as I have to block time to work in my business. So time boxing, I think, is essential for any business owner.



Jay Berkowitz:

Good one. Best business books.



Matt Darner:

Oh, well, you've got one back there. So traction, I think, is a really good one. This is a little bit easy to pull. Pull from, yeah. What is another one? Hacking growth is good. And then if you're into sales, or you're afraid of sales, actually, because a lot of people that kind of shy away from that, this has been my career. The Challenger sale is a really interesting one that may not make as much of the rounds, but just learning how to sell and do it well, without having to feel like the bad guy, right? I think that's important for a lot of people. The Challenger sale is a great one. I love it.



Jay Berkowitz:

I just heard about that one, and I don't have it on my nice, massive stack of books to read. These are books read, okay, but I've got an equally big stack of books to read, blogs, podcasts, YouTubes, what do you subscribe to? And when it hits your feed, you immediately go to that one



Matt Darner:

interesting So personally, as a business owner, there's someone that I really like following. I I fell into the trap of tick tock to some degree, and initially I think that was like, not a good thing for me. And then I thankfully, the algorithm kind of worked itself out, and I get a lot of awesome like entrepreneurs talking on there. I really enjoy Alex hormozi stuff. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Love that. I think that guy's really inspiring. Just I'm trying to do more content, right? And I'm notoriously bad at this, and even though I love talking, that's not a problem. I guess I'm still somehow camera shy after all these years, a little bit. So I'm pushing myself to do that. I love I like his con. I love his content. And there's some other kind of spin offs I think that are very similar to him, that are very good as well. Who's your NFL team? Ooh, so I'm admittedly not the best fan in the world, and then I My passion is just running my business. But I come from Kansas City, and I know it'll feel overplayed now, but gotta go with the chiefs, I think, on that one and yeah, easy one there, right? Yeah. Well, it was harder before, but last



Jay Berkowitz:

one's even easier. Where can people get in touch with you? Yeah,



Matt Darner:

so certainly on. LinkedIn, if you want to connect directly, I love chatting with business owners. I, despite being a sales guy, I'm not a high pressure guy at all. If you want to just talk shop about running business, or if you just want advice on cash flow, LinkedIn. Matt Darner, if you did want to reach out or hear any more about our content, call box.co, so C O, L, B, O, X, dot C, O, my email is just Matt at call box.co, so you can drop us, drop me a note there. But yeah, I love talking to business owners, particularly law firm owners. So if I can be a resource to the any of the listeners that's on the house. So I just like talking shop. It's fun for me too.



Jay Berkowitz:

Well, it's not often we can bring someone to you on the podcast who can help you streamline cash flow and get some cash into your business. So Matt, thanks for your time today. It was awesome. It's



Matt Darner:

my pleasure. Jay, thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate everyone.



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