In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Jon Morris discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"If you want to go above the noise, and you want to generate more leads than you currently generate, you have to do something different." — Jon Morris
Connect with Jon Morris:
Website: RamsayInnovations.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonmorrisriseinteractive
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Jon Morris 0:00
Well, first of all, I think scalability is an option for anyone who wants to scale. But the first thing I would look at is, you know, in order to scale, one question I would be asking is, are you generating enough leads? And are you able to close those leads? And do you have a marketing idea that is scalable?
Narrator 0:23
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin
Steve Fretzin 0:46
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I'm Steve Fretzin. And I just want to let you know that we are here for you to help you grow your law practice and to develop more business. The goal to be that lawyer, somebody was confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Today, my guest is an old friend of mine, and just the greatest guy, and I'd like to introduce John Morris with Ramsey innovations. John, how you doing?
Jon Morris 1:09
Good. Thanks for having me here, Steve. Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Fretzin 1:12
My pleasure. And you've got quite an amazing background. Would you mind sharing that with my audience, so they know a little bit more about you?
Jon Morris 1:18
Yeah, happy to do so. 16 years ago, I started an agency called Rise Interactive, Won $10,000, in a business plan competition from University of Chicago, bootstrap the organization and grew it to be one of the largest independent digital agencies and just accident and stepped down as CEO. And now starting a new company called Ramsey innovations, which is all about teaching people how to grow their businesses, and scale it to be a much larger company.
Steve Fretzin 1:46
Yeah, so leveraging your experience of literally just doing this very thing to now help other law firm managers and CEOs and people in business to do the same thing with their business.
Jon Morris 1:59
Yeah, so the first thing that I would tell people is, if you think about you own a law firm, and you're the lawyer, there are two versions of you, there, is you the lawyer, and then there is you the CEO, and you need to make a decision. What do you want to do? Do you want to grow a large law practice? Or do you want to be the best lawyer that you can possibly be? There's no wrong answer. But it's going to be very hard to scale and create a large company, if you also want to be the lawyer, because the job of the CEO of a law firm requires you to build out sales and marketing infrastructure, operational infrastructure, financial infrastructure, all the other elements that go along with a job of being a CEO.
Steve Fretzin 2:47
And that many law firms that I come in contact with, at least at the size that I you know, I'm dealing in the small and mid market, mostly, the managing partner is the chief bottle washer lawyers, you know, runs the firm manages the firm handles all the stuff and usually wants to pull his or her hair out. So you're suggesting that people have to really split themselves up into specific positions in order to make this actually work?
Jon Morris 3:14
Absolutely. So what you need to think about is the organizational design of your business, every business, it doesn't matter whether you're at a law firm, or if you're a consumer packaged goods company, or any other type of business, Every business has sales, they have marketing, they have operations, which ranges from HR, corporate, it legal facilities, finance, and something to do with clients and customers. And so what you have to recognize is that when you're out doing a pitch, even though your title might be the CEO, or the managing partner of the law practice, you're putting on your sales hat, when you're developing a marketing campaign, you're putting on your marketing hat. And so if you want to scale the business over time, you have to start thinking about how are you going to get others to handle those specific areas. So it's no longer you doing it?
Steve Fretzin 4:10
Got it. And the typical thing that I'm seeing is a managing partner, you know, has an executive committee and in the smart ones delegate, right. So you've got a Marketing Committee, you've got maybe operations committee, you've got, you know, people that are, you know, managing the attorneys, maybe specifically. So is that inappropriate way to approach it? Or is that way off base?
Jon Morris 4:29
I'm not a big fan of the committee structure. I do recognize that when you have multiple partners that you'll have a management committee, but at the end of the day, you need somebody in charge of marketing, not a committee.
Steve Fretzin 4:43
Well, they have on let's say, they have a marketing manager, a CMO, but they also might have a Marketing Committee as well.
Jon Morris 4:49
So it all comes down to authority and delegation and really defining roles and accountabilities.
Steve Fretzin 4:56
Okay, okay.
Jon Morris 4:57
So if you The Marketing Committee. The question is, what authority Do they have, what decisions they make, if things are not going well, who's held accountable, when you have, let's say, a marketing manager, they're responsible for generating leads for the business, they're responsible for building the brand. Okay, they're responsible for the analytics of the marketing. So there's very core things that there needs to be focused on. And ideally, they have a boss that holds them accountable to that. And if that's the committee, that's fine. But you just need to make sure that it's really well defined in terms of every single person's role and what they're responsible for doing.
Steve Fretzin 5:39
In let me ask you this question. When we talk about scaling, there are law firms, let's say that are at, let's say, 30. Members, okay. And their idea of significant growth and scaling is to get to 50, or 60. And that's kind of where they want to hold tight, maybe until they get purchased, that they get bought, or they get merged. Or, or they just stay, you know, independent like that. Others want to, you know, someone might want to build it out to be, you know, the biggest law firm in the country. So, does that change as far as what your advice would be for a law firm as far as growth?
Jon Morris 6:11
Not really, it's the same playbook? So first thing is, a lot of it deals with financial infrastructure. Okay, so one of the questions I would ask every lawyer is, do you put an annual budget together? Is that budget done at a bottoms up perspective? So are you looking at your existing clients, how much revenue you generate by month by service for each one of those clients? Then what you want to look at is your named prospective clients? What are you going to do for that area? And then from there, you're going to get to what I'll call a blue sky number. These are the elements that are necessary to figure out how are you going to actually achieve your financial goals, then you go into the expenses and the cost of services, but just focusing on the revenue. If you do that budget, you'll then understand what the sales and marketing budget is necessary to achieve that goal, then you'll start getting into, well, how are you actually going to allocate that money from a sales and marketing perspective? But the idea is that philosophically, one of the most crucial questions to ask is, what percent of your revenue do you spend on sales and marketing? And is that enough to scale your business? Then you want to focus on the next question is, am I spending my sales and marketing dollars effectively? If you can't answer those two questions, it's going to be hard to grow. You might grow because you're, you know, you're good at sales yourself. But at some point, you're going to hit a cap. And the idea is that you need to do this in a planned and structured manner that increases your most likelihood and your greatest chance of success.
Steve Fretzin 7:53
Yeah, that's really, that's really an intelligent way to look at it. And again, I think, I'm not trying to I don't talk negatively about the legal industry, because quite frankly, you know, I'm there with them as their partner. But I think that that most people would agree that that they're not business people, they have to sort of figure it out on the fly. And I think that's, that's why some of them are, are, you know, their their comp structures are outdated, or the way that they're their technology is outdated, their marketing and website and all the things around it are outdated. So how do they step into 2021? And really identify like, how they need to how they need to really focus to scale.
Jon Morris 8:35
So first of all, just think about what you just said, that the vast majority of law firms are outdated in terms of their technology outdated in terms of their thought processes, outdated in terms of thinking about growth, what an amazing opportunity for a lawyer that wants to take that on. So if you want to become a large law firm, and you have a bunch of competitors, that are using antiquated tactics and are not willing to take the necessary steps, the first thing is it should be easy to create a competitive advantage, at least from a marketing sales infrastructure and operational excellence standpoint. So that would be the first thing is I get excited about that. So I would say the first thing is you need is just a growth mindset, that you're willing to do what it takes, that you're willing to make the investments to really excel and accentuate the growth of your organization. The second thing I would say, though, is there are certain things that philosophically you have to understand I mentioned this in the beginning of you know, this, you know, podcast was your job is not to be a lawyer. Your job is to be a CEO of a law firm. And that is very different.
Steve Fretzin 9:55
It's very difficult. I mean, you're dealing with someone who has, you know, Maybe a few million dollars in clients and is enjoys the work and loves being a lawyer. That's their identity, to say, Hey, I'm going to I'm going to take that set aside and focus on the CEO role. I mean, there are I'm certainly there's people that will do that. But I think most lawyers are really, you know, not open to that that concept
Jon Morris 10:20
within and what I would say is that awesome, they know exactly who they are and what they want to do. But they're, they're not looking to scale their business.
Steve Fretzin 10:29
So they'd have to maybe bring in someone as a CEO, which I know that some do,
Jon Morris 10:33
Absolutely, they would either have to bring. So they have, they have a three choices. choice number one is they're going to say a boutique size law firm, they're not going to get very large, and they're not going to scale their business, but they'll be the CEO, and they'll be the lawyer. Okay. Option number two, is they want the CEO job. So they're interested in learning about sales and marketing and recruiting and best HR practices, and how to do finance and all the aspects that go along with it, as well as strategically, how are they going to grab market share relative to competitors. And they will have a law practice where someone will head that up reporting into them. And then the third option is that they will bring a CEO that is going to do all of the CEO things and allow them to focus to be the best lawyer possible. And I do have friends that have chosen that path. You know, I a competitor of Ries, the CEO once said he never wanted to be larger than 50 employees, because he always wanted to do the digital marketing for his clients. Well, today, there are 150 employees, but he is the chief strategy officer and he hired a CEO who runs the business. And so he found a way to do what he loves, while at the same time scale. So I would say probably the most important thing is really do some soul searching and figure out what do you want to do?
Steve Fretzin 12:11
Yeah, I think that's really, that's really interesting that you've got, you got to just really look at the three options and, and decide where you're taking things. And then and then make it you know, make a decision, I think probably the the biggest hang up and again, if I'm talking at a turn, I apologize, everybody, but you know that the idea that they're going to bring in a CEO that they're going to pay XYZ 200, 300, 500,000 to to do a job that they just expect someone to do in addition to being an attorney, that that's that's too much of an investment to make, for for, you know, maybe a 50 person law firm. Why is that a bad in? Why is it a bad idea, a bad mindset?
Jon Morris 12:49
I don't really necessarily think it is a bad mindset. I think it's it's a soul searching exercise. It's, it's really, what do you want to do as an individual. But you know, some people are excited about the idea of learning what it takes to be an amazing growth leader and a CEO and growing it, some people really want to focus on the law side of it. And that's not the right fit for them. And then you have to come up with creative options, you have to say, I want to scale. And so I'm going to bring someone in who will lead the organization to help us scale. Or I don't want to scale and I'm happy with the amount of money I'm making, and I'm happy with the clients I have, and I'm set within that area. So I don't think there's a wrong answer. It's really an individual choice.
Steve Fretzin 13:35
So let's let's dig into that deeper. What are the what are the questions that a managing partner or an executive like someone that's on the executive committee that's listening to this? Like, what are the questions that they should be asking to maybe identify if if scalability is even an option for them?
Jon Morris 13:52
Well, first of all, I think scalability is an option for anyone who wants to scale. But the first thing I would look at is, you know, in order to scale, one question I will be asking is, are you generating enough leads? And are you able to close those leads? And do you have a marketing idea that is scalable? Okay, if the answer is no, then we have to go identify one. If the answer is yes, can you put more fuel to the fire? And can you accentuate that so that you can increase more leads?
Steve Fretzin 14:23
Right and you've got you've got some firms that are marketing centric, because they can get leads on the internet and they can get people in the door through pay per click and other means and then you've got law firms that are dealing with big big time litigation and they're dealing with with matters that you know, the website is probably going to be more as a as a tool for you know, helping people understand their value or building credibility. It's not really going to be or their marketing generally it's going to come from from relationships, not necessarily from, you know, any kind of specific marketing tools, although things like a newsletter are things that are, you know, how do we get our information into the hands of our prospective clients is important. So so maybe talk to those two, two different types of firms.
Jon Morris 15:10
So what I would say is, in my opinion, there is always an opportunity for marketing. First of all, one of the things that when you're talking about the relationship side, okay, well, then you're talking about something that was, you know, referred to as account based marketing. And you identify specific targets that you want to go after. But what I want you to think about is oftentimes, a sales persons job, whether it's a, you know, a Rainmaker and a managing partner at a law firm hired salesperson, their job is to go close deals. And you need to find reasons to talk to people. And if the only reason you have to talk to somebody is I'd like you to hire me and give me money. You don't have that many reasons to call somebody,
Steve Fretzin 16:02
and probably a lot less friends.
Jon Morris 16:04
Exactly. marketing's job is to give you reasons to talk to, hey, we're putting an event down with this amazing speaker, I want to take you to a sporting event, we develop content that I thought you would be interested in. So there is always ways that marketing can help the sales team in terms of giving them reasons to reach out and talk to people. There's also incredible things you can do with marketing automation, where you gonna have emails on steroids, where it's very scalable, you have content that you've created, that drips out to different individuals. So it's not all about just buying and Google visitors that come to your site, it is really thinking about, we need to get our phone to ring. And it is a lot harder to get the phone to ring when you're just doing outbound activities, we need to make it so that there are inbound activities. And that's marketing's job, and it's not an easy job. But I in general, I heard the same thing in the advertising agency world, that the way we get customers is through word of mouth and relationships, and marketing doesn't work. Okay. And I think it's really funny, you know, as my response will be, how come I'm the only marketing agency that believes in marketing. So we spent a substantial amount of money on marketing. And the results were that we were one of the fastest growing companies in the nation, we are on the Inc 505,000, for nine years in a row, the cranes has 50 for three years in a row. And we are able to fuel growth. But it's because we identified ways to build our brand. And we identified ways for us to generate leads that were interesting.
Steve Fretzin 17:52
Yeah, and I think that, I mean, based on what I'm telling you about the legal community in general, and again, you know, I think the big firms invest a lot of money in bringing in, you know, high end people to do things to grow and sustain and build and all that. It's really the smaller firms that I think, are scared of investing because they've gotten burned, they've hired, you know, a big law.com type of technology company or marketing company or agency and they got stuck into some long term contract or they got, they thought they were going to get x deliverable. And they got why. And so there's a lot of resistance and hesitancy to make investments in people that can come in and advising and help with growth. So that all being said, you have a very unique perspective, not being in the law space, that I think gives you an opportunity to look at a business as a business, not just as a law firm and something that's been specifically in law. How do you think that helps your view of law as a business?
Jon Morris 18:55
Look, I've heard the same comment in a lot of different industries. Okay. So a lot of times lawyers think that the only way that people hire a lawyer is by asking a friend, hey, who would you hire for this specific type of law firm? You know, if I'm looking for IP law, you know, who would you recommend? And there's a lot of people that do do that. Okay. But if you want to go above the noise, and you want to generate more leads than you currently generate, you have to do something different. And my, my response is, you are going to make mistakes. You are going to spend money foolishly and you're going to flush some money down the toilet. And if you get scared, and you don't learn from it, well, then you're going to go back to right where you are. So testing is always part of marketing. You know, someone asked what the marketing campaign for my new company As I explained it to them, they said, you know, well, what are you expecting as the results, and I tell them the results, but I have one comment that I repeat on a regular basis, until you allocate money, you will have no idea if it is going to work. Okay, so but I can promise you this. My business is not completely different from a law firm, it is a high hourly rate type business, where I'm providing strategic advice on how people can grow their companies. So I'm getting word of mouth, from that, and people are calling me. But you know what, I am trying a lot of different things. And when they don't work, I'm going to try something different. And I'm going to keep on trying and until I get the right formula, so you get smarter and smarter over time.
Steve Fretzin 20:47
Got it. So So let's talk a bit about let's transition to Ramsey. Okay, so this is the new business, you've got a specific model going into companies and law firms included to help them scale. What's the secret sauce? What are you doing that they haven't heard before from the countless other executive coaches and consultants and other people that have been hitting them up for years.
Jon Morris 21:11
So a couple things. One, there are three elements to our program. The first is that there is a proprietary framework that really teaches how to propel growth, meaning how to generate leads, close those leads, retain your business and upsell your business. And that is managing your growth is designed to be very simple. So we talked about your financial infrastructure, your HR infrastructure, your communication infrastructure, your processes, your systems, a lot of that is going to sound very similar to other frameworks. What I found with a lot of other frameworks is they help you prioritize your time and say, Hey, you need to go generate more leads, what they don't do is actually help you figure out how to generate those leads. So that's one big difference. The second thing is, the coaches that we are bringing on are highly vetted, they are very data driven, very analytical, which by design, we believe it is what makes them the best types of leaders. So we are looking at a data driven approach. And the third is we're giving you the tools to go along with it. We have seen across the board, the financial infrastructure of the people who come to us who have come from a lot of these other coach places are not set up properly. And people don't really understand having strong financial infrastructure will fuel growth, by understanding what you spend as a percent of your sales. And marketing is just a starting point. If you don't have your finances organized properly, you're not gonna be able to know the answer to that. And so those are kind of the three things that I would say the other thing is our coaches are accountable to you. So a part of their compensation is based on the success that you have in terms of your growth rate.
Steve Fretzin 22:53
I love that because without that accountability, it's just another project or another, you know, undefined, you know, success or results measured. Engagement. Yep. Yeah. So a really interesting stuff. And I think that for the lawyers who were listening and saying, Yeah, my firm is sort of outdated or my firm is not really looking to scale or should be looking to scale. But isn't, they have the opportunity to bring in one of your coaches and in start working with with an organization like yours to, to start putting that infrastructure in and scaling out? What does it look like then in like a year is there are there particular types of goals that you're trying to achieve in a year as far as growth or, or, or how they build it out?
Jon Morris 23:36
For each individual client, it's very different. It all depends on what stage they're at as a company, you know, we have clients that are struggling, where they're losing employees, and they're losing clients, we have clients that are much more stable, but they don't know how to do sales and marketing. We have other clients that are growing really well, but they don't have the infrastructure to support that growth. And so they need more processes and systems in place. So it really starts with an audit of understanding where you are today. And we then help build a roadmap for you that is going to lead you the greatest success. So they'll kind of be my answer to that
Steve Fretzin 24:12
Gotcha, gotcha. Is there a Is there a stage or a time like a size or scope or timeframe where people are in the right the right place in their law, practice growth numbers of people or our revenue or something where, where if they have the interest that they should they should reach out?
Jon Morris 24:31
You know, we have clients are all different stages, but I would say Generally, if you're between, let's say, 10 people and 200 people, is probably the right range in terms of companies that would want to work with us. But it starts off with, do you have the right mindset, if you want to grow a large law practice, if you gotten stuck, your revenue is hit a plateau, you kind of waver between the same numbers over and over. gain or you're growing but not growing at the rate you want. That's the starting point. The next thing is you have to stand, you're going to take a data driven approach to this, we're going to help you, we do a lot of your financial infrastructure, we're going to help you put an A plus team together. So there's a series of things that you're going to have to be willing to do in order to take this to the next level.
Steve Fretzin 25:21
And I think the beauty is the data driven, I think the fact that it's numbers, its results, it's tangible. It's it's it you can see it happening. You can you can work from it versus, you know, a lot of maybe empty promises or blue sky, you know, talk. That's not that's, that might sound great, but it's not, it's not something that's measurable.
Jon Morris 25:40
We are very specifically tied to your growth. Okay, that that's the real key takeaway is, we are meeting with you on a weekly basis, we're doing quarterly strategy sessions with you. We're almost a fractional leader. But at the end of the day, our success is based on the success of you growing, if you don't grow them, we're not doing our job
Steve Fretzin 26:01
at God. Well, this is fantastic. And again, if you're a lawyer listening to this and think that this might be something that you want to bring john in for a consultation, or why don't even better one of his coaches, than john, how do they reach out to you? How do they how do they, you know, get you in front of them?
Jon Morris 26:15
you know, go to Ramseyinnovations.com fill out the contact us form, and we will get back to you right away.
Steve Fretzin 26:22
Yeah, that's great. That's great. And just thanks again, for being on the show. I've known you a number of years, I've come to you for advice, about scaling and about, you know, ideas, I'd love to run by you. And you've always had the most level had, and great advice for, for me in my career. And so I just appreciate your sharing with my audience. So what you've what you've accomplished and currently what you're doing.
Jon Morris 26:42
I'm honestly incredibly honored to be on the show, Steve and I've had such a great friendship with you over the years that you know, it means a lot to be here today.
Steve Fretzin 26:49
Well, outstanding and Hey, everybody, listen, I hope you got some good takeaways. And this is something that's useful to you and your firm moving forward. And the goal is again, not only to be that lawyer, but be that law firm as it's as it turns out today, and that is being confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care of everybody and be safe.
Narrator 27:11
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website Fretzin.com for additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.