Confessions of a Law Firm Bookkeeper

If you know anything about me you know I hate networking. And when I talk about networking I'm talking about it in the most raw way possible. Going to a lunch full of other business owners and saying hello and making small talk all the while hoping the other person sends you business. Reaching out to people randomly and having coffee hoping they are cool. It's just not that much fun for me. So I'v...

This is my favorite time of the year as a law firm owner. The 3rd quarter is ending, which means there's another opportunity to reset your goals and get out there taking care of business. EXCEPT, there's something different this time. I'm not setting my law firm goals like I used to. No longer am I following the usual goal setting method of picking an arbitrary number out of the air and backing in...

Running a law firm, if you it right, will generate a lot of cash for you. A problem I see from many law firm owners, though, is that even though the firm is doing well and bringing in money, the owner isn't getting paid. Today I share my strategies for making sure you, the law firm owner, get paid for starting a law firm instead of sacrificing for everyone around you. I talk about Parkinson's law...

Sonya left a message in my facebook group today expressing her frustration with a lead generation company she'd paid at least a thousand dollars into that didn't yield any good results - not even ONE good result! That prompted today's episode, where I break down why I think the easy road is one paved with great intentions and a lot of hope but ZERO actual results and what we as law firm owners can...

You ever say to yourself "I know I should be doing this thing, but I just can get myself to do it!"?   I have good news and bad news for you.   The good news is, it's all a string of chemical reactions that you can change. Emotions, feelings, all of it... just chemicals.   The bad news is, to get those chemicals to work the way that you want you're going to have to start proactively taking action...

Last weekend I spoke at the Washington State Bar Association Solo/Small Firm Annual Conference about alternative fee arrangements. I got peppered by law firm owners just like you for an hour about everything related to setting great fees, collecting great fees, and doing it in a way that makes clients, and lawyers, happy. Here are a few of the takeaways. The billable hour sucks because as you get...

This is a shorty but a goody, as I recorded an episode right before this and it got deleted (that one's going to be EPIC by the way). Anyway, starting a business is tough. It takes a lot of work, a lot of persistence, a commitment to consistency, and tremendous discipline. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you that, to inspire some confidence, and to encourage you to take action. Cheers. ----...

This weekend I attended a mastermind meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was an experience unlike any other I'd ever had, mostly because it involved a lot more personal emotion than many others. I talk a lot about the experience in addition to the five lessons I learned. These lessons are critical to starting a law firm and growing a law firm and creating your perfect life. Here are the five lesso...

I thought it was about time that I break down, once again, my formula for getting law firm clients. To let the cat out of the bag, it's all about CONTENT. And, this strategy has been proven to work not just for estate planning attorneys, but for criminal defense attorneys, business attorneys, personal injury attorneys, traffic attorneys, divorce attorneys, and many more! To get the full breakdown,...

This is a special episode. I'm giving you an INSIDE look at my weekly Inner Circle Boardroom meeting. And it's even more special because I've got a special guest joining me - the amazing Nic Peterson. We talk about brick and mortar business, mindset, content marketing, the direction of business in general, and so much more! To give you some quick background, my weekly LIVE Boardroom meetings each...

This was a fun episode for me. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Nicholson from Nth Degree CPAs (https://www.nthdegreecpas.com/) where we talked about all sorts of fun stuff. Here are the highlights. How to rig the law firm game so you get to have fun, help a ton of people, and live a great life. How to start a law firm and actually make some money. A different way to forecast growth than sim...

I watched an episode of million dollar listing new york the other day and Luis was back from his worldwide tour. He was in a meeting with a client when the client stopped dead in her tracks and said "Luis, I saw your instagram post... how are you doing?" In that moment Luis looked shocked. He didn't know what to do. Little did he know that moment was about to turn into something very special. And...

Here's the short version of how I get law firm clients using content: Step 1: facebook video (uploaded or live) Step 2: exported to libsyn for podcast Step 3: exported to youtube Step 4: exported to linkedin Step 5: exported to blog post Step 6: facebook ads to push content to cold audience Step 7: facebook ads to push content to warm audience If you want to do this but aren't sure how, and want s...

If your law firm is struggling, or just starting out, or if you'd like to just sign up more clients, then this is a podcast episode you are going to want to listen to. I've had a successful law firm for a long time, and part of the reason for that is I know how to sign up clients (by the way, this isn't a bad thing - I am providing a service people want, and we are very good at what we do). Here a...

This episode is basically a call to arms to stop making excuses and start doing the work you say you want to do. Listen in at your own risk. --------------------------------------- WIN MY MOST 10 INFLUENTIAL BOOKS! Leave a review and subscribe and enter to win my 10 most influential books. [NOTE: I'm running this forever - what I'll do is every once in a while do a drawing for every 25 new reviews...

Momentum... This podcast isn't about building or losing momentum, but the continuous push entrepreneurs feel to be creating momentum, and the painful feelings that can result when momentum has to be tabled (like for a vacation). This podcast is different from most, in a good way. Please listen and let me know in the comments if any of this stuff resonates with you. --------------------------------...

I was at a mastermind meeting the last two days working on making my firm better and the unconventional attorney better. There were 10 entrepreneurs in a room, each with their own unique viewpoint and approach to business. One of the people in the room was named Michael. Michael has a very successful Amazon business... and he does no work. None. Zero. And he's perfectly, 100% happy with his life....

When you get sick, what do you do? Are you trying to bounce back as quickly as possible? Do you shut it all down? Do you "power" through?" This weekend I caught a cold. This is what I do to make sure I operate at my top level as fast as possible, so I can service my clients and my world in a great way. Cheers. --------------------------------------- ARE YOU A LAW FIRM OWNER? Me too. I work 25 hour...

Many of you, as lawyers and law firm owners, are babies. You can see the flaws in the system. You know the lies people are being told, but you are afraid to voice them. This episode is all about voicing those flaws, coming clean with your clients and the world, and exposing the bad sides of the practice of law for what they really are. In exposing those truths, in coming clean, potential clients,...

I thought it would be fun to just dive in and give you some real nuts and bolts strategy for building your law firm today. So we're going to talk about my five-step process to get more clients right now (and, by the way, into the future, FOREVER). The process is quite simple. Here it is: 1. Create content consistently. 2. Distribute that content consistently to facebook/youtube/podcast/website. 3....

It's 9:07PM on Sunday night and I'm in the office recording this podcast episode. No, I haven't been here all day. But I'm here now. Know why? Because it had to get done. I wanted to make sure I released a new episode on Monday, and this was the only way it was going to happen. That's how success works. That's how commitment works. You do the thing even when you don't want to or it's not convenien...

I must have mentioned in an earlier episode that I used asana as my law firm practice management software, and a listener asked me why I moved to that from insightly. I thought now would be a good time to address that. First things first, because I am the unconventional attorney, I don't really like to do anything by the book. This includes using law firm practice management software designed spec...

Last weekend I attended a mastermind with a group that I'm a part of (i.e. I'm not the leader of this group) and the experience was AMAZING! I wanted to take a couple of minutes to give you the big lessons I learned so you could take them and use them. Before we get going, though, if you don't know what a mastermind is, it's essentially the idea that two heads are better than one. It was identifie...

This is a special episode as it's my first INTERVIEW! Malorie Nicole is a person who knows people. She knows what makes them tick, she knows what keeps them up at night, she knows what scares them... And she knows how to approach those barriers, get to the bottom of them, and knock em down. In this conversation we talk about things ranging from mindset to fear of failure to perfectionism to ego to...

This episode is a solution to a problem that I see time and time again from law firm owners. They ask me what they should do and I tell them one VERY specific thing (that I reveal in this episode) and then they go on to tell me that they are, instead of doing this one specific thing, going to go and do 10 things, 7 of which are the flavor the week. And you know what they end up doing? NOTHING. Or,...