Show Notes:

Level up. “Your $1 million law firm is designed to make you $1 million. It’s not designed to make $5 million. It’s not designed to make $10 million. You are not going to get lucky. That will not change. If you want to change your law firm’s revenue, you have to change how the firm is run. The people in it, the systems in it, the investments you put in it, etc. — all that has to change. I remember Crisp was one type of business at $1 million, another type at $5 million, another type at $10 million, another type at $20 million, another type at $40 million, and so on. It’s dramatically different. At each level, it was unrecognizable to the previous level. If we stayed the same, our revenue and profit would stay the same. Recognize that if you want to achieve something different, if you want different results, then you need different actions — and that typically means the organizational structure of the firm has to change as well.”

Relinquish control. “Typically as leaders, someone’s not as willing to let go. In their mind, they tell themselves that they don’t want to let go because they don’t trust other people to do things as well as they can. As soon as they let go, the business is going to decline, they’re going to become less competitive, and then eventually they’re going to go out of business because they’re the only ones keeping everything together. If that is true for you, first and foremost, you’re not a really great leader because if it is still solely dependent upon you and you’re the one keeping everything together, it’s probably good for ego purposes, but not so good when it comes to a sustainable business and a sustainable organization. If anything ever happened to you, that business isn’t very valuable.”

Create leverage. “There’s a difference between being accountable for doing everything and being accountable for overseeing that everything gets done. The ‘everything’ person physically and mentally does everything. They check off every box. They complete every single task. The person accountable for ensuring that it gets done works through other people. This is helping to make sure that other people are getting things done. That’s the only way you can build a great organization, because you need a thing called leverage. Leverage is the difference between what you put in and what you get out. You have effectively zero leverage if you are doing everything, but you have a ton of leverage if you come up with the idea or you map out the plan and you’ve got a team of people that work collaboratively together to actually get it done. That’s amazing. That’s called leverage. That’s how you scale.”

Scale your impact. “I see a lot of firm owners that are the chief rainmakers in their law firm, which is great. If you put up awesome numbers, I’m giving you a high five for that — but you know what’s really cool? When your team puts up awesome numbers. You’re still making the same damn money. You’re just not doing any of it. Isn’t that amazing? You’ve empowered others to do that within your organization. You’ve created opportunities for other people to be able to support themselves and their families and make an impact. That’s much more scalable too, because you only have a certain number of hours in a day. How much can one person possibly do? But a team of great people — wow. That’s endless. The opportunities of what you’re going to achieve with a great team are infinite. If you want to get out of the day-to-day, you have to make that mental shift of realizing that you have to be able to rely on other people and find great people that can lead other aspects of your organization. You have to learn to delegate. That’s probably the single biggest mental shift yet to make. From there, it’s sticking with that decision.”

The X factors. “If you think you’re at the top of your game, you’re not at the top of your game. When Tom Brady’s winning Super Bowls and he’s asked if he’s at the top of his game, he’d say ‘nope’ — and if that man won consecutive Super Bowls, he’d still say he’s not at the top of his game. If you ask Nick Saban, ‘Hey, Nick Saban, when you’re winning national titles, are you at the top of your game?’ He’d say, ‘No. There’s still a lot of room for growth and improvement.’ So who are you to say you are at the top of your game? How do you even know what the top of your game is? Maybe you’re at the middle of your game right now, and then there’s a whole other Everest above that that you haven’t even explored yet because in your mind, you think you’re at the top of your game. Wild. So what’s the X-factor of the most successful leaders? It’s a couple things. Number one: it’s those who are able to exercise leverage within their organization. They have a tremendous amount of output relative to the input they put in. Number two is courage. They’re willing to disrupt the status quo. They’re willing to write that check. They’re willing to make that investment. They don’t ever say shit like, ‘I’m going to wait this out,’ or ‘I’m going to see what happens.’ They’re decisive. They’re focused. They’re dialed in on the right area of opportunity and they go all in.”

RESOURCES & REFERENCES

Schrödinger’s cat
Jenga
EOS
Traction by Gino Wickman
Elon Musk
Tim Cook
Apple
Tom Brady
Nick Saban
Mt. Everest
Crisp HQ
Game Changers Summit
George Costanza