EP104: Law Firm Culture and Performance Guru Bill Biggs – Recorded at The TGR Live! Growth Strategies for Law Firms Event

One of my core beliefs about people and about your team, and I don't shy away from this, is that you must first truly care about them as individuals, as human beings. And you may be the strong type leader. You may be the person who doesn't even think about connecting with the people on your team. I'm telling you, if that's not you, you better get somebody in leadership who has that ability, who has that talent of being able to connect with your team and get them on board with where you're going, because they won't stay with you just for money and just for good time or just for, you know, because they got a job sometimes, but not great high performers. Elite people will have other opportunity, and they will find it, and they will leave you if you don't find a way to care for them and invest in them and make them feel that their lives matter in this journey that we're on.

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,

well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms Podcast. I'm Jay Berkowitz, the author of 10 golden rules and the host of over 100 episodes of this weekly podcast. Each week we have different shows that share great content, and there are different kinds of shows. Some weeks we feature recordings from our monthly webinar series. Other times, we have interviews with industry experts, and today, I have some really special content featuring Bill Biggs. He's one of the legal industry's most recognized experts on law firm management and law firm culture. Bill is one of the lead experts at Vista consulting, and he's the CEO or COO for multiple law firms. He's brilliant, he's engaging, and I'm guessing he doesn't sleep too much with all those jobs. This recording comes from our 2024 growth strategies for law firms, conference called tgr live. We hold this event annually in Boca, Raton, Florida. And if you love this presentation, and I'm sure you will, and you'd like to see a video of this presentation and some of the other rock stars, like the AI lawyer Justin lovely, teaching you how he uses artificial intelligence in his practice. And social media lawyers like Jason Melton, Adam Rawson and Phil Snyder and my presentation on artificial intelligence Search and Google Local Service, ads. Then just go to 10 golden rules.com/tgr live. That's t e n, 10 golden rules.com forward, slash T, G, R, live, and register to get information about tgr live, 2025, and we'll give you a copy of all these video presentations for free to see the greatest stuff from tgr live, 2024 so without any further setup for me, here's the incredible presentation from My friend Bill Biggs, recorded at tgr live 2024 you

thank you so much for having me. I love what I get to do. I love the life that I have, and much of the life that I have, that I've been blessed with is a result of this industry. I found my niche here. I found my place, and so I get to live out my my sense of purpose, my design, my values, hopefully some of my giftings, if I'm if I've got a few. So what you're going to hear for the next 45 minutes hour is what I've learned over the last 15 years. And I just want you to know this for sure. I believe every word that I'm putting up here, and it's been tried and tested. Now I'm not saying it's foolproof, but I am saying that these are not just theories, although, and I appreciate Jay saying thought leader, I do research this stuff. I read the books, I try it out. I still I am a CEO coo in a large law firm, and I consult with law firms all across the country. I believe what you're what I'm going to share here with you, is a critical piece to your success. And we're going to define success, and then we're going to jump in and talk about the things that I think you need in order to be successful. By the way, for the vendors here, for the business that you're in, these things, to me, are transcendent. They cross industry lines. This isn't just about pi law. How many folks in here and plaintiffs work in some way or another? Okay, I'm gonna talk from that perspective, but they're transferable concepts. Okay, so I'm also gonna go fast, and the reason is, over time, I've been asked to do this presentation many, many times over the last five years, and so I apologize. To those of you who have heard it before, although I do change some material, but I'm going to go through a lot of things quickly, and I'll just touch on a few, but I'm going to at the end of the presentation, actually, after I conclude there are a lot more slides that are nuts and bolts stuff, practical application things. I'm going to get that to you at the end. There'll be a QR code. You can snap it, and you've got the presentation, I'll send the presentation to you. So, yes, take pictures if you want, of the of the images or of the slides. I think that makes you know, it's empowering if there's something that sticks out to you, but I'm also going to send it to you, because I want you to have all of it. There's no, there's no I want to share everything I've got. I want to share the secret sauce, if there is any such thing, because I want you to be successful, what I have is yours, and if it can make you better than than who Ra, I'm helping the world and helping do something that I love to do. So five years ago, after being in a law firm for almost 10 years and building a team where we had a lot of success, I was asked to speak at a large conference, and they said, specifically, Bill, you're the culture guy. We want to know, how can you take this idea of culture that is kind of ambiguous and turn it into, how can we actually make more money if we install whatever you think healthy culture is in our firm? I said, All right, that's a great thing. They gave me about three or four months lead time. So I really dug into this stuff and started studying. You're going to see some of the results of that. For those of you who that might seem a little odd, culture reimagined. The reason I say it is and or maybe it's not reimagined. It's imagined for the first time is because we all think we know. We all talk about this idea. It's a buzz word, but who the heck really knows what culture means? That's what we're going to get down into today, and some very practicals of what you can do to build it in order to change your law firm. And really, if what success is to you, if it's just about making more money, I will guarantee you this, or Jay will refund your registration fee if you develop the right culture, you will make more money. So if money is what you're after, right, the right culture will have an impact on that in a dramatic way. I hope you're after a lot more than just money. Money is great. Success is great monetarily. And this will get you there. This is a piece that will get you there, that will undergird everything else, but I also think it'll do some other great things for you. So proof in the pudding for some of you, these may be small fry numbers, but when I first got into the industry, about 15 years ago, we took a firm that was about 20 people. We were at about 2 million. And over time, over about eight years, we 12 xed. It 25 million now that firm is over the $40 million mark. Also just had a $44 million verdict that we'll pay just some amazing things in that foundation that we built. So it was an incredible time, but I want to tell you this, there were no outlier cases at that time. There was nothing unique about the market. There was nothing that we did in terms of that was just some big punctuated equilibrium jump that happened to make those numbers happen. It was hard work, and it started with a culture that we built, a team that we built, and how we designed what we were doing. So for some, you guys may say, Well, that's not that impressive. For some you may say, Oh my gosh. How do I get there? Wherever you're at in there, this is the way we did it, or this is what we got to and that's kind of why people started to say, how'd you do it? What's going on? So when I talk about culture, it really one of the things, and you're going to hear it today, it's about the values that you have, and how you put those values into the people that are around you, and bring true believers into your organization and then create them and invest in them. And, yeah, it is almost cult like, I'm just going to tell you it is, you know, here's what we believe and here's what we're going after, and you need to be on this train if you want to go with us. But one of my core beliefs about people and about your team, and I don't shy away from this, is that you must first truly care about them as individuals, as human beings. And you may be the strong type leader. You may be the person who doesn't even think about connecting with the people on your team. I'm telling you, if that's not you, you better get somebody in leadership who has that ability, who has that talent of being able to connect with your team and get them on board with where you're going, because they won't stay with you just for money and just for good time, or just for, you know, because they got a job sometimes, but not great high performers. Elite people will have other opportunity, and they will find it, and they will leave you if you don't find a way to care for them and invest in them and make them feel that their lives matter in this journey that we're on. And the reason I show this picture is one of my favorite pictures of all time. At we hit when we hit 20 million. We. Took our entire team. We did reward trips. That's something I believe in strongly. And if you want more information about that, come and talk to me. We did a reward trip, and we took over 100 people. These are the leaders. These are all the leaders in the firm that I built. I hired almost all of those people in about a six year time frame, and invested in them. We took every single person in our firm, and if they wanted to bring a plus one, in fact, if they wanted to bring wanted to bring their kids, we could work it out and all that. We took them to the Four Seasons in coalina and Hawaii Oahu, right next door was a Disney Oh, Lonnie, if anybody's ever been there, they could choose either one of the hotels. We took the whole crew for four nights, right? Cost us over $150,000 all right? And you think, Wow, you were able to do it for that, yeah, we're able to get it done for that, right, because of the volume that we had, and this is just a few years ago, and it was amazing. And so every night at our the first night of our team trips, I would always host a leadership gathering of all my leaders, right that I had developed and worked with over the years, and we would have a little cocktail party. There's my wife right there, beautiful wife, and we would invite them. We'd get a big room, we'd invite them, and we would just come and hang out and celebrate what they had done, what they had created. And I'll tell you, you see a lot of smiling faces on there. I believe this with all of my heart. Every one of those people was there because they loved doing what they were doing. They love now, look, law is a grind. Man, it's a hard job. Being in the legal space can be difficult. Of course, we all know that, right? The stats will tell us that, but these people loved what they did. They were all highly talented, they were smart, they were driven. We chose them very specifically. We had a very specific hiring process, a very specific training and development process, but all of it was about making sure they had the same values that we did, that they were highly intelligent, high drive people that could do the work and that they wanted to they wanted to do the work at their highest possible level, and that is the game changer of what I believe culture is all about. Because if you take someone right, you've heard the phrase Hard work beats talent. When talent doesn't work hard, I would rather take somebody that is 100% on board with where I'm going and with what I want to do, and they believe where we're headed. I'd rather take somebody that's 100% on that and has 80% talent, but I'm getting an 80 I'm getting all of that talent. I would rather have that person 10 days out of 10 days every time, than have somebody who's 100% talented, who's a, you know, Mensa candidate or whatever, but I'm only getting 65%

every day of the week, every day, because we'll go farther. So let's talk about it, culture. What does it mean? What is this stuff all about? The baseline idea here that I want you to visualize is that your firm, your organization, your business, is a structure, a house, a beautiful building, right? The culture is the foundation. It's all the things that are built in that undergird everything that you do, if it's not built, right? Everything else falls down. The innovation, right? The electric comes through the foundation. The plumbing comes through the foundation. Everything has to be built there first. And if you've ever seen a building being built, or you watch construction, or you've built a home, you know how critical that is, and that's where they spend most of their time right? They have to get it right. And if you've ever had culture, culture, if you've ever had foundation problems at your home or at your office, you know it's very expensive to repair. So think of it as this. The culture is the foundation of what you have right now in your firm? And I want to start with you asking yourself this question, really, what kind of law firm Do you want? What kind of law firm or business, what type of SEO business, those of you who are vendors, what type of case management platform business do you want? What type of law firm Do you want? And by that, really, I mean, how do you define success? What will look successful? What will be successful to you when you get there, right? What will it look like? I want to tell you, when I first started, I thought that the definition of success, to me, it was all interwoven with the people in the organization and, of course, profitability. But I'll tell you this, you can have crappy culture. I wish what I'm about to tell you was not true. I absolutely wish it wasn't true, but over the years, I've. Found that this is true. You can have a crappy organization that doesn't care about its people and doesn't care about its clients very much and still make money. And if you're a PI lawyer or you have a PI firm, you know that's true. Now I don't think you can make as much money, I don't think you can be as successful, and I don't think you should do it that way. But what I have seen time and time and time again is that I can go into a firm and I can find that the people who work there hate working there. They resent the owner. They resent the boss because they're not treated well because the boss, the owner, doesn't really care that much about them, and they can feel it. And clients are not held in high esteem. Clients, in fact, are seen as a nuisance. Clients are a problem. In fact, one of the things when I come into a firm, if I were to come into your firm, and you said, hey, I want you to come be my CEO. I want you to come consult for me, one of the first things I would tell you is that if you want me, then you have to be okay with me. Outlawing the phrase crazy clients in your firm. Nobody will say, attorneys, you're fired. I give you 30 days of grace. I really do this. You get 30 days of grace. But we are not going to talk about our clients like this anymore, because if you think and you talk about the people whose whose lives you they entrust their this stuff to you, and then they, you know, from the insurance company, you get those proceeds. You get a 33 or a 40% fee or whatever, on their case. And then behind the scenes, you talk about them and treat them like shit. I don't want any part of that, and you shouldn't either, and sadly, it usually starts at the top. I was shocked when I got into this industry 15 years ago of how badly we could treat clients. And the way I got this idea of no crazy clients was because the first firm I was a part of, after being there for 30 days and just sitting with the attorneys and the paralegals all this, I came back to the owners and I said, Hey, we got a terrible problem. They're like, what we know, we know we've got terrible problems, but what which one? And I said, all of our clients are crazy. How do we even function? How do we even survive? They're like, what? And I was like, Well, that's what all the attorneys say. That's what all the attorneys and because of that, that's what all the paralegals say. You know what? I know this is tough, but I'm telling you it's possible. I don't want cynicism in my firm. I don't want people who don't care about other human beings taking care of my clients. And so no crazy clients. And I mean it, after 30 days, I don't care if you're our biggest and look, I've been in $30 million firms. I'm about to get a firm to 50 million. I think in about two years, three years, maybe I don't care if you are the best and I mean it. I don't care if you're the best litigator in the firm. I do not want to hear you talk terribly about our clients. Now, I will also say this. I tell my team, especially the paralegals, especially those on the front lines, I have got your back, and I will never let you be abused by a client. So I'm protecting my team and telling them, Look, somebody abuses you, and we define what that looks like. Because for some people, that's different. There are some clear lines, and there are some others that, you know, Sally's a tough old bird, and she might be okay with Mr. Smith. He was like, Sally, I can't believe this shit, you know, blah, blah. And she's like, Oh, Mr. Smith, it's all right, come on, you know, like she's built a bridge with him, and they'll fuss and cuss in each other, and she doesn't feel abused. Somebody else might. So we talk about that, right? But I tell my team, look, I got your back. You have somebody. You have a client that gives you problems. Immediately, come to me and I will call that client, and we will either figure out, well, the end result will either be they will get that relationship fixed and treat that team member respectfully. They will be moved to another pod, knowing that this is their fresh start and last chance, or I will fire the client. And yes, even on big cases, and sometimes, if it's a really big case, I'll become the intermediary, right? Because you say, Well, this is a huge case. We do want to keep the client, but I don't want anybody abusing our team. So what am I saying? I hold the team to a high standard, but I also say I'm going to support you in getting to that high standard, high expectations, but I'm going to love them to get there. So you got to decide what kind of firm Do you want. So here's the three things that I've decided. For me, this is what success looks like in the industry. For me, number one, high profitability. Absolutely, absolutely. I want to make you a lot of money. You should want to make a lot of money, because the more money we make, and then you invest some of it in your people, and you invest some. Back into marketing, and you invest it into your community, and you do those things, and we grow, then we can help more people, and then our team members can have better lives, and we can hire more team members and give them better lives. So I also tell the firms that I work with, look, you're either growing or dying. I didn't come here to die. I came here to grow, so we are going to grow. And that's painful for some because they don't want change. That's a whole nother topic that we could talk about. But you can't have a group of people that are afraid of change. They want it like the good old days when there were 12 of us and we were like a family, and they don't want to they don't want to get corporate. They want to look if they can't embrace the growth mindset, you got a problem that's a cultural problem in and of itself. All right, so, first thing, high profitability. Second thing, I want to have a team full of people who know I care about them and want to be with me for life I want lifers on my team. Are they all going to be lifers? Probably not. Do they all need to be lifers? Probably not, because we got to figure out who the right people are. But I want them to love working and doing what we do. They must be true believers. So number one, profitability. Number two, a great team. And number three, clients held in high esteem, clients who love us. Many of you read the book raving fans. I want to create raving fans in the firm, and you do that not only with good service, not with smoke and mirrors, but with genuine care for the client, do what's right for the client, so for me, and now, fortunately, it's awesome to be at this point in my life now where I and career where I say, Look, if I'm going to work with you, we're going to go for these three things. I'm going to make you a whole lot more money. Yes, but we got to love the team, and we got to love the clients, because that's what I want to do. That's what that's what success means to me. And if one of those three isn't a part of it, then I'm going to be dissatisfied. So that's how I define success. So you got to decide this is critically important. You got to decide what kind of law firm you want, and then you got to take ownership for that reality,

and whether I'm talking to paralegals, to owners, to anybody, any level in the firm. I always say this for your job, for your department, for your team, for the whole dang thing, the future of that thing, and for you guys that are owners and leaders in your firm, the future of your firm is on you. It is absolutely 100% unequivocally on you don't be a victim to any circumstance, to market forces, to a bad team, to a frustrating or dysfunctional leadership team, because you are the leader. You're the person who sets the tone. You're the person who has to decide, and gets to decide how to fix the problems. Don't blame your team. Don't blame your competitors. Don't blame the market forces. Don't blame anything. And really I'm not even saying Don't blame yourself. I'm not talking about shaming yourself, but what I am saying is, don't be a victim to what is going on around you, own, the future of your firm. Because when you do that, and when you see that not as a heavy burden, but as a full opportunity of freedom to say, I have the ability to make the changes that need to be made, to do the things and I'm not a victim. I'm not chained to all these other things because that instills bitterness, resentment, helplessness. My graduate training is actually in Counseling Psychology. I've had, you know, I've done some a few things career wise over the years. Last 15 years in the law firm space, before that, working with professional athletes and professional sports teams. But before that, I worked with trauma victims with counseling, and one of the things I learned the most was that the most damaging thing to the future of a trauma victim was not just the event, not just the trauma, especially if it was abuse, especially of the worst kind. It was the victim mentality they got seeded into their life that kept on keeping them down, and what it usually turned into, if they didn't do the extremely hard work of finding healing and wholeness, was it affected their mindset, and they became helpless in the world around them. So they lived a life fearful that the world was happening to them, blaming the rest of the world, living in fear and anxiety. Now what sucks is that it wasn't their fault, but as somebody, I've heard it before, dammit, it's not your fault, but it is your problem, and only you can fix it. And that doesn't feel good, especially when you've had trauma victimization. What does that have to do this? Stop being a victim to your own law firm. Stop blaming everyone around you. Stop being a jackass that walks around out of your own anger and broken expectations about what's going on and how things aren't happening the way you want. On and do something about it. And that doesn't mean go in and fire everybody. I came back from that conference and I'm not going to be a victim. You're all fired. Yep, exactly. Not what I said. Now that may need to happen, not all of them. There may need to be changes. What I'm getting at is get some hope, believe that you can do something about changing your firm and then get about it. Get going with it. All right. The reason I believe that is because I believe this. This is one of my core beliefs over these years of what I've done in leadership over the last, really, 30 years of my career, every single problem, every single problem in any organization, is a leadership problem. It's a leadership problem. I don't care if it's because the baseboards need to be painted in the hotel room. I don't care if it's faulty plumbing. I don't care if it's because the food didn't come out right in the restaurant. I don't care what waitress did this, or what cleaning person did this, or what it is the leader's problem, because they either coached it. You've heard this before, they either coached it or they allowed it. Once again, take responsibility, right? Take responsibility for your firm. All right. Let's get into the meat of it. Here are the three things that I believe are the most common for why firms underperform. This is and of course, this is in a PI context, but you can take that middle one and you can change that in a lot of ways. But really what it's about this middle one here, if you're not in a PI context, the middle one is you don't fully believe in what you're doing. You don't have your why fully embedded in who you are. You don't deeply believe in the work, and you haven't taken that to absurd levels. And you need to, you need to be a full on Kool Aid drinker, values driven person who believes in the work you do. And by the way, I think in almost any job, in any business, you can find a way to believe in what that thing does, because almost every business helps people. Almost every business is around doing something, providing something for human beings, and that there, if you can get behind that, then that's enough. So here are the three things. Number one, lack of design. You started your firm. You got going. It began to grow, but you never really stepped back and said, What do I really want out of this deal? How do I measure success, and what's the plan to get there? So you didn't blueprint it, you didn't architect it, you didn't craft a design. You didn't have somebody come in and help you do that, coach you through that process. And so it's growing into this thing, and you think it's this is awesome and all that, but deep down, you really don't know where you're headed, and that is going to lead to serious bottlenecks, serious design flaws, typically, because a lack of design, right? It's like if you threw that foundation together in a house, and it was just haphazard, with unskilled labor, with unwith, no design. And then you wonder five years later, why your house has fallen down around you. Because it wasn't designed well. If you don't have a plan for what you want your firm to look like a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, you're going to be in for trouble, because if you do grow, which you hopefully want to, either way, either you're not going to grow and that's a problem, or you're going to grow and then you're going to bottleneck and something's going to break down seriously, and you're going to be in trouble, and you're going to have a problem. Lack of design is rampant in the industry, and the reason is because, typically, law firm owners start their firm practicing law, they have visions of being big and cool, like they see on social and these other firms and all that, but they never really became business people. They're not really organizational people. They're lawyers. And you can be both, but a lot of times it's a different skill set. And I'm just telling you, I don't often see both of those work together. What I do see in the best scenario is a great lawyer knows how to practice law. They're the best at it. They're fantastic. They're building a law firm, and at some point they bring in someone, either a partner, a CEO, a COO who is an organizational business expert, either as a consultant, but ultimately into a role COO or CEO. And they say, All right, let's work together. I know how to practice law. I know how I want the systems to work, but let's put it together and make something they set a design. All right, so lack of design, and we'll talk more about that lack of aggression on case value, not believing in what, not deeply believing in what you're doing. And then a leadership deficit, which is the culture piece, a leadership deficit, all right, so let's define culture. I'm going to go through this real quick. The most overused, least understood word, the. Buzz word, just like the other one is core values. Lately, it's disruption pivot. You know, all of these, all of these words, and we say, What the hell does that mean? We talk about it. You can say 18 words in a row and nobody knows what they mean, right? All right. So let's figure it out. What does it mean? What I did when I was asked to really get into this stuff and give this talk, the first time, was to go and say, All right, who are the experts? Well, sociologists and anthropologists, they're the ones who have been studying culture for the longest time. So by the way, and those who have heard me before, I know it's the same joke. I need to change my joke. But guys, it's not top golf every quarter. It's not breakfast tacos on Friday, guys. Just because, you know, you gave everybody, everybody in your firm, a rose on admin day, doesn't mean that you have a great culture, because it was probably your administrative assistant or your CEO who did it anyway. And then you're like, how much did we spend on those roses? Why do we do that? Well, it's admin day and people admin day. What the hell is that? Why do we need a day for that? Get back to work. All right. Culture. What does it mean? All right, be nice to your team. Have a fun work place, go to golf, breakfast tacos, all that stuff. Well, here's what sociologists and anthropologists define it as. This is really good stuff, the customs, language, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people or other social group. And so in some ways, it's everything, and that's what this can get complicated, but I'm going to boil it down, but really, your culture is everything, and the reason your culture is everything is because it is a manifestation of the things that you believe most, right, and whether you've said them or set them or well defined it, the stuff you believe comes out. So if you just think clients are a means to an end, then you got people all across your office talking about crazy clients, including you,

because your value is not for clients. Your value is for the money that these clients will make you. Your values are coming through. You're establishing your culture. It will have you've got a culture one way or the other. But the reason I say it's everything not to be ambiguous, because that's where I'm trying to get us away from. But to maybe here's a better way to say it. It affects everything in your firm. So think about it, the customs, the language, right, the arts, the social Institute, the norms, right, the things you're doing. How about this common language, values. It's okay if we put values and beliefs together for a little bit, the rituals, what are the what are the things we do on a routine basis? What are the accepted norms about what we do in our firm? Is there accountability? Is there not? How do we enforce that accountability? And then arts, there's a there is actually an overlap here, and I'll tell you more about that. This, I want to run through fast, common language. Every firm has it certain things. You say, it's our industry, that stuff's important, but you'll have the slides, and you can reach out to me if you want more. This is the most important one. It's the stuff that you most believe. This is why that core value stuff, that other buzzword stuff, is so critical. Because to me, the values that you have in your firm the things that you most deeply believe about the work, and most deeply believe about how you want to do the work. Those things are going to turn into actions. Those things are going to manifest themselves into the way you do work every day and the way your people do work. And this is a critical piece, your beliefs and values are going to determine your rubric, whether you know it or not, for how you make decisions. So the decisions you make about the next steps in your firm, and how we're going to do this and how we're going to do with this client, how we're going to do with our team, and how we're going to do marketing. It's really an expression of your values. Those decision making, things that you do, all the decisions, it's it's an outflow, it emanates from your beliefs and values. So what do you truly believe about this work that we do? And by the way, coming up with core values for a lot of people is not, excuse me, is not an easy process, but I believe it's absolutely critical. It's not a soft skill. It's not a silly exercise. It's not, you know, just blah blah, if you do it right, it is a game changer for the future of your organization. And if you don't, then you might be successful and make some money, but you really don't know why you're doing it, you really don't have direction. And when you get a team of people that are so aligned and with a set of values and a direction, you are talking about serious success. And I guarantee you this for the sports fans in here, or even just fans of business or whatever, you look at the elite, you look at champ. Champions who repeat championships. You look at organizations and franchises who win constantly, or at least consistently, they know what they believe. They have values that have set the course. And that's why you have Cleveland Browns, and that's why you have New England Patriots, who obviously are taking a dip, but you get what I'm saying, organizations that can't get out of their own way, for any of those that are Detroit Lions fans, right? Basically law anybody in here, you'll admit it this season, right? One of the worst, one of the worst teams in league history. But this new coach, he's changing, and you know what? He's changing the culture, and everybody says that, but they don't know what the hell it means. But he does. He knows what it means by the way. He graduated from Texas A and M, just to let you know that. So your core values are important, the things you do, the way you work, in your norms and rituals, the work, everything you do and then this the art that we do. What is it? It is the client experience. The art you create is the client experience, right? What your clients experience from your firm is the unique expression of how you are different and set apart and differentiated. Another, another buzzword differentiated in the market, but it's true, right? The art of what you do is the expression of how your clients feel about working with you. So this stuff is amazing. This overlap of culture into business is fascinating. So that's what it boils down to. But I want to tell you how we built ours, and I'm not saying this is exactly how it would work for you, but I'm telling you this does work, and I've done it over and over and over again, both as what I'll call an embedded CEO or COO for four firms, but also for countless consulting clients that I now have to take a very select list because I because of time constraints, and now I won't do it unless I can come in and do these things. I won't take a client because I know what it takes. So here's what we built it on, and here's what I continue to build on. Number one, true believers. I don't want anybody working for me that's not a true believer. They got to believe in what we're doing. They've got to believe in the why. They've got to believe in the purpose. They've got to believe in each other. It's got to be that way, and hiring is a big part of that. At the end of the slide deck, which I'm not going to show you all of it today, but I'm going to give you our hiring process. It's all there, laid out. You have any questions? Give me a call. Hiring is one of the most important things you'll ever do. One of the next important things is how you onboard and train and cultivate your values in those people that you hire. All right, but if you get the wrong person, then you're going to exhaust a lot of resources trying to train them and grow them, and it's going to be lost resource, because you're going to have to let them go. And by the way, I love people. I want a team of people that I can love and like. I want them to be my family. But I also don't shy away from making moves. When I need to make moves, I do it well. I do it respectfully. I do it with love, really. I do but if they're not what we need to move forward, then we got to change that. That has to change. So number one, I got to have a team of true believers. So I want you to think about your team right now. How many of them come because of the paycheck? How many of them come because it's just a good job, and how many of them are there because they believe in what you're doing? If that number is low, it's your fault. And I mean that, you know, I don't mean to be an ass, but I'm saying you're either coaching it, you chose it, or you're allowing it. So if you don't have a team of true believers, what are you going to do about it? Now I say first, well it, since it's my fault, I gotta take responsibility for it, so I'm going to do something about it. And that, again, that doesn't mean come in and wipe out everybody. I'm going to set the course. I'm going to say, Guys, this is where we're going, and I'm going to start reinforcing it, and we're going to grow. And then those that say, Ooh, I don't. I can tell they don't. They're not buying in. I'm going to give them a chance. I'm going to sit down with them personally, say, Hey, tell me what the tell me what the block is. Well, these clients, I don't know. You know, you don't know you don't know what I deal with every day with clients. Yeah, I do, well, I can't. Yeah, you can't ask me to if that client says something, I gotta, I gotta say something back. Okay, well, that's not where we're going. We need to move in a different direction. All right, true believers. Second, and this comes into how my leadership style. This is my leadership mantra. This is the the the substance, the core, the the culmination of years and years, even before this industry of working with people, this is what I believe, unequivocally. I love my people, I and I mean that and what I'm. Mean by that, every person who works for me, I want the best for their life. That's simply what it is I want the best for their life. I can't pay them twice what everybody else is paying them. Of course, there are things I can't do, but I care about them, and I think they feel it. I think they know it. I think they sense it, not all of them. Sometimes, there's a lot. Sometimes we you know, my personality isn't right for them, vice versa. But I start with this core belief that every human being is worthy of respect and worthy of dignity, and I'm going to care about them. And I also believe there are huge business implications. I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't believe there are huge business implications. You don't, it doesn't mean you have to be a softy. It doesn't mean you have to be ooey gooey and all that stuff. I get it, but just believe that they're valuable human beings. Like catch yourself, stop yourself. They are not a means to an end, right? They are partners towards success, your team members, and I don't even say the term employees, your team members, are not a means to an end. They're not just cogs in the wheel. And you know why I say that? Because that's not how they see themselves and when they feel that from you, you are losing relational capital, you're losing trust, and they will not follow you, or at least they won't follow you at that full on here. Let's go level. But if they believe that you care about them, and by the way, from the business, I'll tell you, I don't pay the most in my market. Never. I probably pay, honestly, 10 to 15% less than most of the firms, and I still have the best people. And I mean that. And you know why? Because I love them, because I know it.

Now I want, and I'm gonna, I want when, when we can be, we're gonna be super generous. But it's not just about the money. In fact, if you read the books, right, autonomy, mastery, purpose, those are the three things that people look for in a job. Autonomy, mastery, purpose. They want a chance to not be micromanaged. They want a chance to be great at what they do, mastery. And they want a sense of belief in what a cause, a purpose. Give your team autonomy, mastery. Purpose. Pay them well, pay them fairly. Love them, and you'll keep them for life, most of them, and they will climb mountains for you. They will go into battle for you. In fact, if there's nothing else that you hear today, the whole the reason that you know Jay and I know each other, people ask me to come and speak, it boils down to this, I will take your team. If you turned your team over to me for one year and you let me have it. I'm not asking for that's not a sales pitch. I'm just telling you, if you gave me control of your team for a year, maybe 18 months. By the end of that time, I would hand off to you, or I would help work with you a team that is going to go to the ends of the earth for what we're about. They're going to give everything they've got, and they're going to do it because they feel on mission, and because we picked the right ones, and because we taught them, and that is an absolute game changer in any business. And I tell you that, and base everything and kind of boil everything down to that, because I see a failure at that all the time at firms who have high turnover rates, who are disconnected from their team members, who don't have enough leaders, who the bosses resented all of these things. I know it's hard. You might not be wired that way, but I'm telling you, this is an absolute game changer. And so here's the ooey gooey stuff, and the reason that I deeply believe in it, and it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do for your people. Now, when I do work with the firm, I always get to the back, you know, when I as the process unfolds, I say, All right, here's the secret behind the love. Your people demand high performance. It's hey, let's hire people that we can love, right? But I'm serious that values alignment, people that can share our DNA, or that are open to it, right? And here's the deal, if you do that, I believe you get those right people. You coach them up. They believe in what you believe, then they want to be coached hard. They want because they trust you. They want to be coached. They want you to say, hey, how do we get excellent? How do we get excellent? Let's move forward. They'll take the coaching. They'll take those moments where you have to give some difficult feedback, where you have to be critical, they'll do the hard thing, they'll accept the hard words, and you can demand high performance. So I'm a high accountability guy, but I'm also a high love guy, right? You put those two things together, and you're talking about radical success, and it's so much fun. It's so you know how much fun I have when I take a team and they're, you know, single moms and their kids or whatever, to Hawaii or to the Bahamas to Vegas to Breckenridge to Cancun. That's where our team's going this year, when we hit our goal and it's a stretch goal only one time. Time in my entire career, have I have we not met a stretch revenue goal in order to get our team there? Because I get the attorneys around, I gather them up in the attorney meeting, and I say, Damn it, we're going to hit this goal. We are going to be highly profitable and produce high revenue. And you know why I want to do it, not just because of the financial incentive for us and and you guys, yeah, that's good. Well, I want every attorney in this room to make a lot of money. That's good. But you know what? I want Sally to get to go to Hawaii. Because Sally has and probably never will get to go to Hawaii, and she damn sure is not going to stay at the Four Seasons. I want her to get that chance. And you know what? If she does and we do, Sally's never going to leave you because you changed her life, you've given her and by the way, in this day and age, you take a team on that trip. You know how that's going to spread on social media? You're going to pick anybody you want in the market. You're going to poach them. I just posted. I work with a firm in St Louis. I just hired the president of the paralegals Association, and she came to our firm because she hates her former boss. 15 what time? What actual time is it? Okay? Thank you. So she's the president of paralegals Association. I'm not paying her a dime more than what she's making right now at her current firm. She came over and I just posted about it. I said, we just hired Heather, president of St Louis paralegals Association. She is a freakin stud. She's a rock star. I think I called her a straight killer. I was trying to be cool, right? That post got 1000 views last night. I sent her a screenshot, and of course, I tagged her on this. On LinkedIn, I tagged I tagged her on it, but she doesn't get to see the number of views, right? So I screenshot, I sent her last night. Said, Heather, you've been with us for two weeks. I posted, you know, so proud that we hired you, and I posted it out there, and there are 1000 people. She was overjoyed about that took me a minute, right? Because I'm proud of her and she and by the way, bringing her on, I also talk up the rest of our team, because you don't want to say, Oh, well, we just hired this person. Now the rest of you guys suck, right? So there's balance right there, and there's design to it. So love your people demand high performance. I believe that's the best leadership principle, seated core value from which you should operate as a leader that there could possibly be. I'm not going to go into all that for time's sake, aggression, if the in the PI space, I absolutely believe in aggression. I have a full case value case evaluation system. Many of you know Chad Dudley or heard of Chad? Chad and I worked on this together. We were in sister firms when he was coming up with his mSv program. I call it FSV, very similar stuff, but this is a absolute game changer in your firm. It's hard to do it is not easy. A lot of firms try to do it. Implementation is the challenge, but it is an absolute game changer. And talk about profitability differences, that's where you just start to see massive growth. So I can tell you all about that as well, but I am no country club lawyers, no goody. Goody, feel good with the adjusters. I hate the defense sorry, if you're in here and you're from a defense firm, I don't I think that it's a racket. I think it's a total racket. And I think they screw people over all the time. And I love that we fight against them, and we fight and I want everybody on my team, and I'm harder, and the bar is higher to bring on a defense attorney or paralegal into the firm than it is from somebody from plaintiffs, because I have to deprogram them, and I want to know that they want to be deprogrammed, that they want to move over to our side, because they believe in what we do, alright, whatever you do, even if you're on the defense side. God love you, that's fine, but at least believe in it, right? I don't know how you can, but so you see, right? It's just in my DNA. It's in my core. I believe in what we do, and I really do. I haven't convinced myself of it. I look at it and I see it, and I say, we're on the right side, all right. And then last thing, I want everybody in the firm to think of it as their firm. I want everybody to think like an owner. I tell them, walk around here and act like you own the place. But that also means clean the toilet when it needs to be cleaned. That also means pick up a sheet of paper or a piece of paper on the floor. Love this place the same way that I do love this place, the same way that the owner does. Why? And I do this to every outgoing MBA student at Texas A and M. I give a talk about ownership mentality, this one topic every year, and I tell them, stop being adversarial with your employer. The people who hire Don't be an adversary. Be like them. Adopt their values, care about what they care about. Now, if you don't like that over time, and you realize there's a disconnect, and you can't do it, then get out. But the time will come if you choose well, and this is I'm talking to future MBA, like people that are going into executive positions or going to work their way up. I say you. Got to get in alignment with the owner, because when you do, the owner will see it, and really good owners will embrace it and say, oh my gosh, I've got somebody I can trust, right? Even though no owners or lawyers have any trust issues, right? Or leaders in here? No, you need people you can trust. So I want ownership mentality people. I want people who believe in what we're doing. It's similar to the true believers idea. But I want them to care about this place, because when they do, they work harder. And I can trust them. I can trust them all right, so those are the things we did.

A few things about culture here, if you were to boil it down, this is the one if you're going to take pictures. These are the next few slides that you ought to take pictures of if you care about this culture stuff, because here's the tangible reality of what it is. I can measure it. I can come into your firm. I can measure the health of your culture. And this is what I'm measuring in every person. And I use these fancy words, saturation of belief, the saturation of belief in every team member of these three things, do they believe in our why do they believe in our purpose and what we do? Do they believe in each other? That's the hardest one, by the way, to get all the drama and the gossip and the bullshit out of the interpersonal relationships of people, you cannot tolerate it. If you tolerate it, it's going to crack your firm right down the middle and into a bunch of pieces. You have to have people respecting one another, and you have to demonstrate that it is the hardest one to accomplish, but you've got to lead the charge, right? But they have to. I don't want people fractured. I want harmonious. Now, smart people have conflict, and that's good. This doesn't mean no conflict, not at all. It means we do conflict, right? We do conflict. Well, we don't hold grudges. We're not bitter, we're not talking behind one another's back. We're not aiming at somebody else, we're not backstabbing, we're not shooting darts. We're not aiming for somebody else's job. No, we are going to respect and work together as a team. We can compete, we can have conflict, and we're going to have open discussion, radical candor, candid conversations. Read those books. We're going to get it fight and unite in the leadership team, but we're not going to treat each other like crap. We're just not going to do it and then belief in the client, if you did nothing but reinforce those three things. Just think about everything you do, every mandate that comes down from on high every decision you make, if you measured it by those things and said, Does this demonstrate a belief in our purpose? Is it consistent with our purpose? Is it helping our people work together better? And is it showing a high value for the client without ever talking about or saying the word culture or anything? If you'll do those three things, you will have a strong and viable and powerful culture, because it boils down to those three things. This is the other one. If you want to take a picture, this is how it works together practically. This is how you reinforce it. These are the practicalities of how you put it together, belief in the purpose, belief in each other, belief in the client, how we hire right people that either do or can believe in our purpose and and how they treat each other. I'm looking for culture fit when I'm hiring people, then we train them right. That's got to be reinforced. That's the process. And then our structure, our leadership, how we function, our standards, our accountability, our processes, all these things. I measure all of this. I run all of these things that we do, which is everything that you do in your firm, every day, I run them through the process of saying, Is it reinforcing this stuff? And if it's not, we're not doing it. Now, this is where it does get technical. There is science to this. This is not just feel good. That's why I say. This is not soft skills. This isn't soft science. This is serious business, and it's got to be done right, right, in order to get it right and see it make the biggest impact. But even if you try, even if you just start going down this path, you're going to have more success. All right, so why are you underperforming those three things? Have you designed your firm? The Blueprint? I'm going to run through these really quickly. It's just what's fun. You think you've built this, right? You're like, well, we're. We went from two people to eight people in 19 years. We are. We're an incredible firm. And everybody loves working for me. We have built the firm of all firms, the Taj Mahal of firms, and all the people who work for you and the people who get your services. Think that this is their experience. You know why? Because you didn't design it. You think that was designed? Look, I grew up in deep, deep woods at Texas, and this somebody did design that. I mean, there's, there's probably some rednecks dream, right? But it's dangerous. Doesn't get the job done. It's highly inefficient. It doesn't have rhyme or reason to it. It's built upon making snap decisions to solve instant or to solve immediate problems without any foresight, without any thought about how is this going to affect the big thing, there's a lot that goes into this. Yeah, so that was designed meticulously, lots of thought, and it's a masterpiece. That's somebody's masterpiece, but probably not the one you want design. You might you're getting a slide deck, but when I think about an organization, I break it down into these things. Culture is your foundation, your org chart is the plan, the construction plan. Your people in process is the framework of the building. Five minutes, great leadership development meeting rhythm. We're about to get into that of developing leaders, right? We said the first thing was a lack of design. The second thing was lack of aggression, lack of doing the things that show you really believe in the work that you do, the manifestation of that purpose of that belief, aggressive on cases, aggressive on case value. Then the third thing is developing the infrastructure of leadership necessary in your firm to carry out those first two things, and then planning, if not, if you guys aren't doing some type of quarterly or annual planning process where you take a step back, at least you and your leadership team, and if you don't have a leadership team, you need to do that. You need to be a planning firm. You need to have time set aside, right? And I could go all into the details of that. It's a highly powerful process. But if you're not doing that, you're hindering your own growth because you're not getting people on the same page. So you need to be a planning firm, thinking about what's next, setting goals, getting people aligned on those goals. And you can get this into, I mean, a freaking machine, a planning machine, where everybody is highly aligned, and it's fantastic. It's powerful. All right, so those are the reasons we're performing underperforming. These are the reasons that we have problems with aggression. And I don't want to get into all that, because I don't have time, but you know, Country Club lawyers, what I mean by that is they're more, you know, they're more concerned with their buddy, who's a defense attorney, and how they play pickleball, and they don't want to upset him, and they think that they're getting the best deal, and, you know, whatever? No, that's not how it works. You got look you. Everybody in here knows it. The best pi lawyers, the best trial lawyers. They're a little crazy, like they see things differently. They see value differently, and they don't play Country Club lawyer. They just don't, all right. And one other thing, you know I say, Who's Training your lawyers on how to get value? Because most leaders, most managing partners, most owners, come in and say they just want to hire an attorney, and then hand them some cases and say, make some money. We don't like to train lawyers. So guess who is training your lawyers on value, on case value? The adjusters. Adjusters, every day are training your lawyers on case value. They are planting into your lawyers. Your lawyers are getting beaten down every day, right with what's wrong with the case? What's bad with the case? This is why it's not going to and that's how you turn a lawyer who could be a killer, a straight killer, into a country club lawyer. Because all they're ever going to do is settle. They're never going to file suit. They're never going to litigate. They're never going to actually take a case to try. Case to trial, and they're going to come up with all kinds of reasons why they shouldn't, how it's more efficient on that bullshit, they're not aggressive, and the reason they're not aggressive is because they have, unknowingly and by our fault, been trained on case value by adjusters and the defense, all right? These are all the things that have to do with building in a system you got under performers in your firm. The number one reason is a leadership development, right? So I said there were three things, lack of design, lack of aggression on your cases, and lack of leadership development. If you don't have an infrastructure of leaders in your firm, you're underperforming. You need to have about eight to one. Eight to one is the rule about one leader for about every eight people in your firm. So just think about and a leader, somebody who has the authority to make some decisions at some level, has the information necessary to make those decisions, has the insight, has communication with you, or some type of leadership system so that everybody in the firm is being held accountable in the right way to do the same things, the right way to follow the values that you have. Without a leadership structure, it's you and the rest. And one of the I mean literally, we can do the science on this literally, at about 25 to 30 people. When a firm gets there, it's when the owner's ability to lead by force of personality becomes a detriment 25 to 30 people. Now it can happen sooner than that, depending on that owner, that leader's persona, but you can usually carry it pretty good till about 25 or 30 and then it will be mapped. CHAOS if you don't have more leaders in place. So I'm a big believer in becoming aware of yourself as a leader and developing leadership structures around you. Again, I won't go into all that, but there are a lot of blind spots that we have as leaders. It's a great book if you really want to do some self counseling, leadership and self deception. Fantastic book, old book. But really it just basically causes you to take a step back and say, Are you really what you think you are? Like, am I really the leader that I think I am?

I won't go into all that again for time, but you'll get it if you want it. You hired wrong. You train at none at all, or it's terrible over and over again. Our training systems could be so much better, or we're discouraging great leaders maximize performance. Anybody ever see this? This is a Simon Sinek video. You should watch it. Anybody ever see this? All right, real quick, and then I'm going to close up. If you haven't, this is wildly get the slide deck. Go watch Simon Sinek, here's the here's the bottom line. Quick. We all want a plus players. That means high on culture and high on task. I used to not say performance on this side, just say culture and trust. But really, culture is performance. So this is a person who is absolutely incredible at what they do, at their job, and then also, they are incredible for the office. They love their people. They are true believer, man, this is the and that's who you should be. That's who you should be, as the primary leader, the most dangerous anybody who's heard this before, the most dangerous fracturing, toxic, poisonous letter on the board. What is it? See, you know why? Read the literature, watch the video. But the reason is because you have promoted those people. You have given them all the honor because they've made you so much money and they're so good at your job. In fact, you've got them training other people. The problem is they're an asshole and they are toxic, and they have their own agenda, and they have their own things in mind, and they will bring your organization down. They will bring they will be a bottleneck, and you're letting it happen. The sooner you deal with that, the better they are high performers, but they are not well loved, and they are seen as a sacred cow, and they are so common, if you want to talk more about it, come talk to me later. It's a problem, and it's going to hurt you, and it's also going to hurt to remove them, because they generate revenue. But if you don't, you're going to be sorry. This is all how I would decide or define all these different ones. You can see all that stuff. I'll give you. I've given you the hiring stuff so that you'll if you want, you can build it in the right way. Building a mid level leadership team, that's the way it should look. Your executive team, your CEO if you have them. And then mid level leaders, there's your eight to one ratio. And then we bring it down to this. If you want more info on building out the mid level leadership team on any of this stuff, I'll be here all day. I've got to step out for a few meetings, but I'm here. My wife's flying in. We're going to spend the weekend. We have a leadership conference on Monday through Wednesday in Vegas. But I'm here, and I love talking about this stuff. And it's not a sales pitch or any of that. It's I just, I love it. So if you got, if any of this has resonated with you and you want to talk about it, then let's talk more. I go back. What kind of law firm Do you want? You got to ask yourself, what success means. Here are the three things that I believe cause the underperformance. You got to own it. It all boils down to you. Every problem is a leadership problem. You can do something about it. Now, I know I've been kind of hard, but I'm telling you this to give you hope. Like to say we gotta be honest and look at the problems, and then we gotta fix them, and we can, you can you can fix these problems. Snap that real quick. If you can give me feedback, please be radically candid with me. Tell me, you know you're awful. You suck, slow down, whatever. Give me a little bit of feedback. If you send me your email address in there, then I'll send you the presentation. I'm not gonna end a date with you inundate you with emails. I might tell you about a conference here or there, but you're not gonna get on some list that you know, like the last time I did this, I haven't emailed those people in six months. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you. Jay

test, one, two. Awesome, Bill. Don't go anywhere. I got a couple things so you all agree when I said Bill was the best, like, he's the culture guy, I didn't undersell. Did I didn't under promise. So when I saw Bill about a year ago, I took a page full of notes, like I took eight pages full of notes, and then we sat down. You remember we were in that sub board room or whatever? And I said, you know, Bill, I gotta get you on my podcast. So we went through all my notes. We talked about everything. And guess what? I took another page full of notes. Did everyone take a page full of notes, especially the people who run firms? Right run companies. So some of the things that I wrote down, number one, care about your team as human beings. Number two, outlaw the term crazy clients, and it starts at the top, very important, right? If you you know, if you're of a culture that our clients are bad or that our clients are, you know, negative, like it's a negative thing, like you always have to service your clients. Number three, for the leader, I have your back, and I will never let you get abused by a client. So that's a counter to that. If a client's too crazy, you got to fire the client, but you don't talk culturally about the crazy client. Number Number four, get your clients to love you and create raving fans. I mean, that solves all problems. If your clients love you and they refer you, you know your life, your life's easy. Your business is easy. It's easy for your team, and it's easy for your marketing. Number five, what is culture? It's not top golf but, but culture is everything. It's a manifestation of things you believe the most. And number six, have a common language of values and beliefs. And then when I went through the notes, I kept seeing one word, and it reminded me when I saw Tony Robbins speak about 10 times over four or five years, because we were working on doing the marketing and filling the rooms for Tony. And you know, he talks about belief, and he said, everybody in the room has belief. He said, You know, I'm not talking about church or synagogue. But if, if you have that, you have belief. But you know, we you have to have belief. Because, like when you're driving, for those of you who are going back to the airport on I 95 you got to be confident that the people aren't going to cross over from the other lane. Like you have to have belief in life, in the good of most humans. And so, you know, I wrote down here every time Bill said the word belief, where's my B's, had a lot of B's, belief in your design, like your why? Belief in what the firm stands for, everything is a manifestation of what you believe the most, your common language, your values and beliefs, the things you believe, the way you work, what you work for your purpose, your belief fits with your values and beliefs. Hit a section on the true believers. You have to be true believers, the three beliefs, belief in your purpose, right? So the theme I took from that was, was belief is, everyone agree? Anyone have a note that they would share with us? One thing you learned from bill today, one volunteer. Come on. We got one right up here. Thanks, Alyssa,

thank you. Good morning. My name is Bruce silver. You know, I believe that and have that nobody does anything for anybody that they don't like. So I am one of those people that is constantly falling on the sword for everybody. You know, I get angry and frustrated like everybody else, but I wouldn't say shit with a mouthful, but in terms of maximizing case value and not making nice nice with the adjusters, I think that your point is well taken. It's just very hard, in my opinion, to get the adjusters to go to management to get you money if they think you're an asshole. And but I also agree that if you want that top dollar, you got to fight. And that's my takeaway, you know, is bare knuckles fighting.

And as much as I may, you know, exaggerate it a little bit. I don't believe you have to be an asshole. I agree like, you know, honey rather than vinegar at times, but I don't think that means that you can't be aggressive. I think you can be respectfully aggressive, and I think maybe sometimes it has to bleed over into asshole territory. But I think most of the time it's just they know they're in for a fight. Like you know, it's the respect of two boxers, right? You go into the ring and you say, look, I want to knock this guy's head off, but then I'll have beers with him afterwards. That's okay, like that. I'm totally okay with but I would rather, I think everybody knows this, I would rather adjusters feel a little bit of discomfort and a raging amount of respect when they have to go up against a lawyer in my firm. Then, oh, I'll be able to work with old Leon and get you know, we'll get something worked out. You. Yeah, just my experience. So I do want to say I don't mean, you know, you got to be an asshole, but I do mean aggression. I believe wins the day and everybody, you know, I love this stuff as well. Case, value is a big thing for me. The other thing is, at the end of the day, they've got a book on you. You know that, right? I mean, they're studying your tendencies. They're studying what you do. And so just, just be aware that you know they're they got a lot of resources. They're working really hard to keep those values down. And sometimes you gotta, you gotta take some hard steps to make them uncomfortable.

Okay? Big round of applause. One more time for Bill, you.