Stephanie Everett
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Stephanie Everett is a lawyer who built a successful law practice and now is an author, teacher, and coach to law firm owners worldwide with Lawyerist.com. If you sometimes feel stuck in your law firm business and know that you need to work ON your business more –then you will love hearing what Stephanie has to say.
Transcript
– Hi, thanks for joining us. This is our extended interview with Stephanie Everett, where after the Facebook Live ended, we talked further about specific action steps that law firms can take right now coming out of the pandemic. The first part of this video is from our GNGF Live, which happens every other Wednesday. The second part here is the bonus extended interview and if you already saw the live, I’ll put a time stamp to the exclusive interview where it starts down below. So be sure to like and subscribe to follow along with all of our great conversations on legal marketing and the business side of running a law firm. And to watch this video on the platform of your choice, you can find everywhere we stream at GNGF.tv. Welcome to GNGF Live, your bi-weekly, ask the experts about all things law firm marketing and business growth. I’m Mark Homer, author of “Online Law Practice Strategy” and founder of Get Noticed Get Found. I’m excited to have today’s guest Stephanie Everett from the lawyer’s team. Stephanie is a lawyer who built a successful law practice and now is an author, teacher and consultant to law firm owners worldwide. If you sometimes feel stuck in your law firm business and know that you need to be working on your business more, then you’re really gonna like with Stephanie has to say. As always though, be sure to like and subscribe to our page, not just the video, so you can be updated whenever we go live in the future. Of course it never hurts for you to use all that legal prowess to smash that like button on the video to help us out in the Facebook and YouTube algorithms. So, this is another video that we recorded when convenient for our guests and we recorded it ahead of the actual Facebook Live, so we’re streaming this during the Facebook Live, but it was recorded before. But we are in the chat, so please ask questions, interact and everything as usual, while we’re live. If you’re watching this in the future after the Facebook Live, we do monitor the comments on Facebook and on YouTube and we’ll, look to try to get back to our guest to answer any questions that you may have. On weeks when we’re not streaming interviews, we do release on YouTube, our GNGF tip series, which are video specific to kind of like one marketing or business side of law topic. So check it out on our YouTube page and Joe, can you drop a link in the chat for more of our recent videos and then we can you know, then you guys can check that out, check out our YouTube page and subscribe there. Okay, let’s get to the interview. Stephanie, thanks for joining me today.
– Glad to be here.
– So, we’ve gotten to know each other at you know, legal conferences, but the benefit of the audience, can you introduce yourself?
– Hey everybody, I’m Stephanie Everett and I guide lawyers to create healthier law firms.
– Awesome, so, you know we’ve had interesting conversations about some of your past experience and how that led you to the work you do today at Lawyerist, but I’d love for you to share that with the audience.
– Yeah so I’m a lawyer, graduated law school, went to big law, thought that that’s where I would retire because that’s you know, I don’t know, what you do after law school. You think this is, this is where I’m gonna work for the next 40 years. About six years in, had the opportunity to start my own practice with a partner, which I had no idea I would ever do. But we launched, we left the big law with, it was the two of us, we took my legal assistant with us and in about seven years, we grew that from to 20 people. And it was awesome, I was the managing partner and all of a sudden I discovered this love I had for running a business. My dad was a business owner and we always were trading business books and self help books that just like was our hobby and I just loved the business aspect of running a firm. So in 2015, when I was ready to kind of make a shift in my life, I started looking at all the things I was doing, especially my volunteer work, at that point I was teaching and coaching collegiate women on leadership skills and working with a school in Haiti and I was like, you know what, maybe there’s something here and all these people, colleagues were coming to me saying, how did you grow your firm so quickly? What are you doing? And in those conversations, I started discovering that what I thought was maybe common sense or what I just had figured out wasn’t so common. So I was like huh, maybe there’s something here, or maybe this is actually a business idea. Got the opportunity to shift and got trained as a coach and certified and then ended up launching an incubator here in Georgia for the Georgia Supreme Court, the five law schools in the State Bar. So, through that was teaching newer lawyers how to start socially conscious law firms. That were kinda is where I met Sam and Aaron, I attended one of their events and we started talking and next thing you know, Sam and I were speaking at a conference together, had dinner and he was like, why don’t you come work with us? And I was like, oh I was just hoping to get on the podcast but that sounds pretty cool too so . So there you go, right. And so now I’m at Lawyerist and, and helpin’ attorneys.
– So, you know like I’m a big fan of Lawyerist and you know I’ve actually helped at some of your Lawyerist Lab event. How would you describe a typical Lawyerist attorney who’s reading blogs and you know, following you guys, going to your events?
– Yeah, I think what makes us have, we were talking about this yesterday. I think it’s an attorney who, wants to do something different, right? They recognize that their law firm is a business and so they already have that business mindset and they don’t have it all figured out, that’s certainly not required, but they at least have a desire to figure it out and to try new things. And what we’re trying to build in our community as a place where you don’t always just hear an immediate no. Because oftentimes, we go to bar events, we go to our other attorney networks and you say things like, alternative pricing or fees or you know, name your thing, remote offices for a while, like now everyone’s getting a taste of what we’ve been preaching for years, we’ve been talking about going paperless and living in the Cloud and having a remote firm, for a really long time. And, there you know, there’s a lot of communities out there that would immediately say no that would never work and what we’re trying to build a community of people who are like, yeah maybe and let’s explore that some more.
– Yeah it’s interesting, that’s probably why we get along so well ’cause that like, at GNGF we look for that type of client for us as well, right it’s somebody who is thinking and understands, I love the lawyering aspect of being a lawyer, but I own a business and I need to think about all the business things and running that you know and what, you know how to make something better and how to be more efficient and all those kind of things. If somebody’s like in that mindset, which I would agree, I mean that is, like that your Lab events are great for that I mean, it is the brainstorming that goes on from the lawyers, let alone the experts in the room, where it was fascinating, so, it is awesome to be part of. So your work with law firms, where do you see most small and solo firms like really struggling these days? Or maybe not these days but you know, we’re in the middle of COVID right now.
– Yeah, right, these days is hard. I think they’re struggling with, they know they wanna be intentional and they wanna be client centered and that’s maybe the other thing that keeps our community together, this focus on putting our clients first. But yet, the practice of law is so demanding that it’s hard for them to find the time and energy they know they need to really focus on their business. I mean we actually did a workshop yesterday, where the goal was let’s find five hours a week that you can get off of your plate so that you can spend the time and energy you need building your business because they know it’s valuable. But it’s still just so hard to do and so really it takes a lot of thought and intention and building a whole series of systems for your business. It absolutely can be done, but it’s just not gonna, it’s just not something that will happen, you have to be really intentional and make sure you put the time and effort into a lot of different parts of your business to make that happen.
– Yeah I mean it’s interesting I was just having a conversation with it might have been Kristin from Law Clerk and, and we were talking about how just a lot of lawyers when they’re not, you know like traditionally thinking about their you know, running their business, right it’s, oh when I’m not lawyering, I’m not working, right it’s like, all these other things are things I need to do more layering, right and, and it’s actually for a lot of law firms out there, like you were saying, it’s realizing that yeah lawyering’s important and that pays a lot of the bills and that’s you know, what you got into this for, but there’s a whole bunch of things you need to be very intentional about on the non-lawyering side like you know, like you said, like process and tools and systems and maybe marketing and all these kind of things right so, these are things that I think a lot of, especially a solo you know like, that is stuck in this billable world as well, right, a billable hour world, it’s hard to get to that point.
– Yeah we–
– So.
– Oh I was just gonna say we were talking about this yesterday with Sam. A lot of tech companies out there are advertising. Our tool is gonna get you back to what you do best, which is lawyering and that’s a fun slogan, but it kinda misses the concept too that you’re running a business and I think just because you’re doing non-billable work, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable work and that’s the mindset shift that that lawyers need to make that actually, if I spend some non-billable time building out something that’s gonna tenets my business, that’s super valuable, so.
– Yeah, and I mean, your best business owners figure out the concept of leverage early on. And think it’s when you’re stuck in that billable hour, it’s hard to think of leverage right, it’s you know like, I’m using tools and people and stuff to be able to provide more value and more scale. So it’s… Along, I guess along with that like, what are some of the common trends then that you’re seeing working you know, one on one with lawyers and you guys are developing tons of resources as well, like what are some of the things that lately you’ve seen coming out of this in addition to maybe you know, where to find time to work on these things?
– Yeah a lot of folks are playing around with their pricing models and their delivery models right now, which is you know and COVID gives us an opportunity to do that. We’ve been talking a lot in our community about not the pandemic, but the recession because unfortunately, that’s what I’m afraid we’re gonna be faced with for a long time. I mean I’m no economic expert. I just know the impact I’m seeing on my husband’s business and all the other business owners that I know and that really concerns me and so we’re looking at, we know that people are gonna need help and luckily, we’re the helpers, and which is great for lawyers, right. So people are still going to need us, but maybe the help they need looks a little bit different or feels a little bit different, or we need to offer it or price it differently to be able to meet what you know, to meet them where they can come. And so, I think there’s a lot of fun conver- that gives us some room to play and experiment and so I’ve got a lot of folks who are playing with subscription models and flat fees and different pricing models and just seeing you know, what makes sense and really where we can drive profitability, so that’s a big focus that we’re thinking about, not just raising your revenue, but how can we actually increase your margins.
– Right, right and so what are, when you talk about some of the alternative pricing or altered delivery, give me some, you know, example or two for the audience of that ’cause I love the concept and I’ll talk to some people about it and people who haven’t been or maybe read about it or heard of some really good examples are just, like you said, very fast on the no, like no that doesn’t work for me, no that doesn’t work in my town, no that doesn’t work in my practice area, whatever right.
– Yeah, so yeah, I get this a lot, especially the litigators, they’re gonna tell me you could never flat fee litigation. And I’m like sure you can, you’re just not, you gotta think about it differently. So for example, and there’s lots of different ways we can look at it, so let’s just take that litigation example. I’ve got some attorneys who are looking at a litigation in phases, and we all do that anyway, we all know what the phases of a case go through, right. So in the pleading phase, the initial phase, maybe there’s a price that you could put on that and maybe I have no idea what numbers are, I’m just gonna make up some numbers here. You know, maybe that’s $1,000 a month and then when we hit discovery phase, then we know there’s extra work to be done and so maybe the price changes at that point and then somebody’s charged you know, $3,000 a month and then at trial, maybe that’s a $10,000 a month, I have no idea. One of the reasons I like a model like that and I think people need to so the client knows what to expect and the attorney knows what to expect, but it also gives the client an incentive to settle because we talk about this a lot, especially the family law cases. You know, you don’t wanna just get a client in a situation where they’ve paid you everything they have to pay and now all of a sudden they can go all in over the toaster. You know, I’ve talked to a family law lawyer who told me yesterday that they had a prolonged case over a garden hose because it wasn’t clear if that was a gift or a marital property. And finally the attorneys were like, here’s your $25 hose, we’re gonna buy one for each party, just to settle this. But anyway, so that’s one pricing model that is a fixed fee that looks more like a subscription model and so that you get paid as the case goes on and maybe those variables change your monthly price. Another way I have a family law lawyer doing it, she has a menu, so everything is priced out. Here’s how much a complaint costs, here’s how much mediation costs, here’s how much a deposition costs. And she’s able to sit down with her clients on the front end and make a plan and empower them to make some decisions about their case, you know, based on what they’re going to pay, which is what we as consumers do all the time. If I go, I just bought a new car and this time I was like, you know what, maybe I don’t need a sun roof because that’s a silly you know, a feature that I don’t know, it’s hot and my husband always likes to keep the cover closed so then we’re not even getting the benefit of it, right? But that’s a decision as a consumer I get to make. But in law, with the billable hour, a lot of times we’re just giving all that power to the attorneys and so they get to make all the decisions in the case, they get to decide what work needs to be done, which then has a result in the bill, the client gets the bill and if they can’t pay it, they’re just now stuck. And you’re, as the attorney, stuck with this AR, where if you’d had a conversation on the front end and actually figured out what the client could afford, maybe you wouldn’t gotten yourself in that situation. That’s my little soap box about all kinds of things.
– I mean you brought up a whole bunch of things there that are interesting and let’s see if we can, peel the onion back on a couple. So, the first thing is just all the data, you know shows that consumers want to know kind of what things are gonna cost up front and I don’t think that should be a surprise because in our life, there’s almost nothing now as a consumer where you don’t know the cost before you get into it, right? I mean, even like doctors now, you’re encouraged you know, by your insurance company, everybody does, second guess and ask and get the price for all the procedures ahead of time to figure out what insurance is gonna cover it and everything before you even go into anything, right? So the most complex things were being told get all the prices. And then yeah, people will call a lawyer and they’re like, well, you know it’s so much an hour, I can’t really give you a price. And that is very, very common, right, that’s actually the norm. And so, you know even the clear legal trends report right, talked about how that was one of the top like three items that consumers were looking for when they first interact with a law firm was, what is it gonna cost me? So by having like even like you said like those ranges or the menu items and stuff, it’s not like here’s the ex- I’m telling you exactly what it’s gonna cost, but here’s the factors that go into it, I think it’s, it really adds a lot of value up front. And if somebody like says, oh that’s not for me and leaves, that’s okay, they didn’t leave like unhappy, right they just left like oh, I’m more informed now, and I can’t do that yet.
– Yeah and the biggest push back I get, attorneys are scared, are you know, number one, it does require work, I’m gonna be honest, like yes it is harder to do. The billable hour puts all the risk on the client and none on you, so doing this does take extra work. But we’re scared that if we just tell them up front, like I had someone say, well if I told ’em their divorce was going to be $60,000, they’d walk out the door, and I was like, and so I was like, well you can empower them, number one, they need to know that. Like what so you’re just gonna set them up for a $60,000 divorce and then you’re gonna get to 30 and they’re gonna run out of money and you’re gonna be stuck in the case? That doesn’t seem like a good solution either. But also, we’re just so used to attorney saying, well my hourly rate’s 325, give me a $5,000 retainer, we’ll see where it goes. So they’re nervous that if you do what I’m suggesting and have that honest upfront conversation, that the person’s gonna be freaked out and just go down the road, but I’m sure and you probably you know, work with attorneys on this, empower them. Here’s a place where you could some content and give them some information, you know like we love those giveaways. Here are questions, the top five things you should ask someone who’s gonna charge you by the hour. And you can, obviously you’re gonna ask them in a very creative way, that you know what the answers are gonna be. But you can empower your clients that if they are gonna go shop because they get scared by your price, that they have the information they need to make a good decision for them.
– Right yeah no, and so you’ve got the up front piece, right and then like how the process is gonna work, I mean the menu items thing was really interesting, right, like kinda like Chinese menu pricing.
– Yeah.
– And the interesting thing about that is like it gives you an opportunity to walk through, well here is what the process looks like when you go through, in this case, I think it was a divorce, right you said.
– Right.
– So that was one of the other things that people wanted, right, it was like, what is the price and what is the process, like what happens through this process? And being able to use your pricing to actually have both conversations, that’s almost genius, right, that’s great for them. You can use your price, right, like when you start doing some of that stuff you can use your price to actually impact some of the consumer behavior like you mentioned, right so it’s, oh we’re incented to settle now if this is gonna keep going on because you know, like I’m still in it financially as a consumer versus I paid my money and now I can ask for whatever I want. The other side of it was that AR issue, that is I think it was one of the biggest eye opening things for me like you know, a few years into working with you know nothing but law firms, was the amount of money that’s consistently written off.
– Yeah.
– Am I right? Like and, like that’s just, oh that’s just a way to do business, you know and like, but no, people don’t wanna accept a credit card, you know like, and then like well, people accept credit cards, you would get more payment fast, you have your pricing model figured out better, you would get paid for every- I mean, the idea of writing off 20 to 30% of your AR every year, like there’s no industry that thinks like that, other than legal, right? So that was fascinating to me, so I love that that one little, and this is like one area, right, one trend area that impacted all these areas of business that are like pain points that oftentimes, or you just don’t even realize their pain points ’cause it’s just been the norm, right.
– Exactly, yeah, love that.
– So let’s jump into you know, all these ideas you guys took and then, you and all your Lawyerist co-authors, right so, you know, Sam and Aaron and Marshall I think helped with it, right so.
– Yeah.
– You guys wrote a book and I have it here ’cause I love the book. It’s the “Small Firm Roadmap” right and, I mean I’ve still got Post-it Notes and dog ears here so. So you’re the book on running a small firm and it’s been a great resource, go-to resource for you know, your audience and others. What had you, I mean you’ve been writing all tons of content on your website, you have all these events and stuff, what took you out of, the effort of writing a book? ‘Cause I know how painful that is. It takes a lot of time and effort.
– Yeah for sure, but we wanted to have a resource that really guided attorneys on the process. Like here are the steps you can take to get started and it’s not as hard as it seems because it can be really intimidating, like if you’re listening to this right now and all this sounds great but you’re like, I have no idea where to start. I mean we wanted to give you literally the title of the book, a road map. Here is a way to get started and in a way to frame how you think about your business. And so, it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun and the reception to it has been great, so we’re so thankful that everyone’s using it and enjoying it and that they’re, that they’re getting value from it and help, which is really the whole point.
– Yeah I mean it’s been great so, and I wanna talk about because you know you have this great “Small Firm Roadmap” as a book but, we’re running out of time on our Facebook Live, so if you could stick around me for a few more minutes, I wanted to hear about, kinda like, what’s the roadmap now looking for coming out of like this big crisis we’ve been through, right. So if you stick around, talk a little bit about, more about that, that’d be okay?
– Yeah absolutely.
– Awesome, and we can post that on Friday on our YouTube channel and we’ll get it like, the extended interview up there, so that would be great. But before we go, where can people find you and the Lawyerist team online?
– Yeah so head to lawyerist.com. So lawyer I-S-T.com. You can find me at stephanie@lawyerist.com. You can get a free chapter, the first chapter of the book free if you go to lawyerist.com/book and plus we just have a ton of resources on the site, so I think you’ll find it valuable.
– Awesome, so we’ll get all those links into the chat, make sure everybody grabs that and yeah, go get that free chapter or in my opinion, go get the book, it’s awesome. So thanks so much for joining us and everybody today, thanks for joining us and be sure to like and subscribe of course our page, so you get notified when our next GNGF Live episode is airing. And we’re gonna keep going here in the GNGF studios, so be sure to check out the extended interview with Stephanie on Friday. We’ll throw it up on our YouTube channel. And we’re gonna talk more about specific actions like, and steps that small firms can take, and be focused on right now coming out of this pandemic. Thanks everybody. Thanks for sticking with us, Stephanie. So, I wanted to talk more about you know, kind of all the, you know you talked about this roadmap you guys have built and it was great and it was awesome and it was written all before this pandemic. So, I wanted to kind of dive into things that because everything still applies, but what are maybe some specific things we can think about like, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now. I know you know if you’re a DUI or criminal attorney, I mean, you are just really struggling and you know we’ve seen family, heard from family law, like you know, what should Lawyerist be prepared to change or and adapt? Or what important decisions maybe should people be thinking about in the coming months?
– Yeah I think there’s a couple of things. Obviously you need to be ready to run remotely, if you’re not already. So I think some of us, when this thing first shut down, I’ll confess, I was one of ’em. I mean, our team was remote so that piece wasn’t you know, a problem, but I thought we were looking at the two or three week thing, I don’t know I just had never, I mean I’ve never lived through a pandemic. So, it looks like as the reports come out, we’re looking at this thing being longer and longer. And so, if you haven’t already gotten your office and your team ready to function remotely, you need to do that now. There’s really just no excuse. I’ve heard from an attorney this week and he’s like, you know, our office is fine but dealing with opposing council has been disastrous. And so we’re hearing that there’s still a lot of lawyers out there struggling, they’ve got notes in their office, they’re not, I don’t know, there’s just all kinds of problems and they don’t seem to be able to function and that’s just kind of not acceptable in 2020. So, get your tech up, we’ve got a resource right on our home page for remote ready that’s gonna walk you through what does it mean like, what’s the basic tech set up that you need at home. I’ve even been telling folks, if you can’t figure out like go get your desktop from your office and bring it home. Like there’s just no excuse, get a home set up going and get what you need so that you can function every day. Train your team on using tools like Zoom or whatever you need to do so that you can have some video calls, there’s some really simple steps that you can put in place to kind of mirror the interactions you’ve had with your clients, pre-pandemic.
– Yeah and I would say I’ve heard a lot of the same kind of stories of people saying, all my files are in the office so I’m going back and forth and you know bringing banker boxes you know back and forth. I have to work from the office ’cause that’s where my server is, right and people are like still tethered to that server that’s you know, sitting in a closet under the coffee machine, probably so that’s you know, certainly not safe. But like and I’ve literally seen that at offices, right so, yeah so, I mean like the idea of like not being ready seemed crazy to you know, a marketing agency that’s technology forward that you know, was built to be remote first, but we get it, I mean you know, like we have enough lawyer clients to see that oh, that’s the reality you know so. Totally, totally agree and with all those examples ’cause like we’ve heard the same thing. So, what are a couple, so like a couple things that maybe people should be focused on right now. So you’ve talk about getting remote ready but, what are some foundational things. So I’ve been telling people it’s like, hey, if you’re not busy right now, I mean, first of all, that sucks and we get like, revenue and is a struggle right now. But maybe it’s a good time to work on that foundation. So what are a couple things that small and solo lawyers can think about in terms of working on my foundation to come out of this stronger?
– Yeah, so we’ve been talking a lot in our communities about pivoting and to be clear, pivot does not necessarily mean you need to change practice areas, you know, if you’re criminal defense attorney, I get that you’re struggling right now, but that doesn’t mean you need to become a bankruptcy attorney, right like, that’s a whole, that’s a whole lot of work to get up to speed on. But what you can do is get really intentional about who it is you serve and what kind of help do they need? What kind of help do they need now and what are they gonna need you know, three months, six months, a year from now, and I know you work with your clients on this, so really getting clear about who is your ideal client, what does that profile look like, and what help do they need and how can you provide that help? That is great work for you to be thinking about right now. So maybe the pivot isn’t necessarily practice areas, but maybe the pivot is in thinking about what help looks like, thinking about your offer, your value or even just your value proposition. Maybe the offer stays the same, but how you need to talk about it in your marketing might need to change based on where people are right now, and so those are all great exercises that you can do right now and they don’t even require technology and bonus points, pick up the phone and call your people, call current clients, call past clients, and check in on them. Number one, it’s just a good thing to do right now and people really want that connection so just picking up the phone and saying, hey, how are you doing? Like, this is crazy. I never thought we’d be in a pandemic, did you? You know, are you holding up okay? It’s gonna show you care, but they’re gonna give you such valuable information about what’s going on, what kinda help they could look like and you never know, you know, it may even just shake loose some new work where they’re like, actually I’ve been meaning to call you because such and such just happened, maybe, I mean maybe they didn’t get arrested today, but their brother-in-law got arrested six months ago and now they need to really get that solved. Or maybe there’s an expungement issue that’s been hanging out for whatever long time. So, the point is there is stuff you can be doing and just even as simple as connecting with clients and past clients is a great way to spend your time right now if you haven’t already started doing that.
– It’s interesting, I… it matches right up with, it’s actually taking it even a step further, but I’ve been telling people you know like, go through those client files like, I think attorneys in general and we get so, you know they get so so busy and it’s like they forget to pull that information out and put it into an email list and you know, have like some way to kind of touch people and then I’m like, right now when we’re all trapped at home, when the mailman comes the door, it’s like the big exciting moment of the day, right, you know, so like like, maybe send some snail mail, right like create a little newsletter, you know that you would normally email and like mail it to somebody ’cause, but picking up the phone, I mean that taking a step further and if you have the time, like that would be a wonderful, wonderful idea, so just you know, taking all the steps and just taking all the way to the the actual personal, gonna be great, and then I mean if you’re in criminal stuff, there’s like, and your State has you know, all the rules go back to your files and maybe email the people that hey, you know in these three, four months, here’s some people who are eligible for that so, great ideas. So, in the areas we talked about like finances. So we talked about remote ready, we’ve about finances a little bit, and we just talked a little bit about kind of like like client outreach, what’s maybe one action step you can leave people with after you know watching saying, okay if I do this one thing that’s gonna move the ball forward for the next you know week or so that I can you know just grasp out of this?
– Yeah so, in addition to being remote ready and, and looking at your ideal client and really getting clear on who you serve and how you need to serve ’em, you know the final piece that I would leave you with that I think super important is get ahold of your cash, like understand, I know lawyers, I’m a lawyer so I can say this, right? Sometimes we tend the manage our accounting by just thinking, I feel like there’s some money in the bank account and maybe now’s not the time to do that. I mean never is the time to do that, but especially right now. So you need to understand how much cash you have today and what the cash flow implications for your business are going forward, now more than ever you have got to be intentional and you need to understand exactly how much money’s coming in and what needs to go out. So if you don’t already have a cash management system, again, we have a tool right on the top of our website on the homepage that we’ve put up there in light of this to help people. But please go figure out your cash because you don’t wanna, you wanna be ahead of it, you wanna be if there’s a problem coming down the pike in six weeks, you can do something about it now. But you’re not gonna be able to do something about it if you don’t figure it out until seven weeks from now.
– And there’s some great resources for that so yeah, check out Lawyerist resource, there’s some great books out there, but that is one area where I’ve heard a lot, can’t remember who it was. Somebody had told me once, well you know, there’s enough gross, there’s some net in there somewhere and I’m like, no, that’s not how it works. You could have a lot of gross and have no net, you know so, but that’s like you said that’s how sometimes people think, right, they’re so used to this expensive billable hour that there was always a little bit left at the end of the day. But knowing your runway, knowing you know like, what the cash position looks like if you know like if, what would be your scenarios. Those are huge and I mean, I think all of us have been you know, going back and double checking you know, like our own numbers and stuff even that that practice just regularly, it’s just maybe a little bit easier for us ’cause you know, we have all the data there but it’s–
– And you and I talked, and you and I talked about this too so I wanna make sure we make this point. There’s opportunity right now, guys, like this isn’t, you know I know it sometimes feels it just feels crazy, but I think there’s a lot of business opportunity and not in a slimy way, but maybe there’s a chance for you to move some money and invest in your marketing, invest in new marketing tools that you didn’t use before you know, double down on some things. I mean Lawyerist is hiring right now so by the way, if you know any candidates, send ’em our way. You know so there’s gonna be great talent out on the market in a couple, unfortunately right, as a result of some people making lay offs and things. You wanna be in a position to take advantage of those things so, make sure you’re the back of the house is in order so that you can do those things.
– Yeah absolutely, we’ve got, you know people who are calling us up and saying, hey this, like these ads on Facebook that’s we’ve always been running are working better than ever, can we put more money there? I mean we’re like 70 something percent traffic increase to websites from Facebook right now, I mean everybody’s at home on Facebook apparently. So yeah, I mean taking advantage of that and looking at as a, if you understand your numbers, then sometimes you can go oh, there is room to invest in in these areas, whether it be marketing or technology and tools and processes so you can hire somebody else or outsourcing, you know investing in some of the outsourcing tools, like Law Clerks. Awesome well, thank you so much for sticking around with me and diving into like a little more detail about what people can do, taking your roadmap and saying specific to today, specific to the situation people are facing right now. So helpful and always great to talk to you. I will agree that we both were having conversations about right leading up to this about like, oh it’s only gonna be a two week blip and we were still talking about how you know like, oh when we’re just gonna be flying and going to events still and all this craziness happened like within like three or four days. I mean, Lab became a virtual event like overnight so, and great job on that by the way, that was an awesome event so.
– No, thank you, we’re so glad you got to come and participate. It’s always fun hanging out with you ’cause you just brought, you bring so much to the community, which I love.
– Thank you, awesome. Well have a great day, Stephanie and we’ll catch up with you later.
– Thanks everyone.
– Hey what’s up, I’m Josh. Thanks so much for joining us. If you feel like you learned something today, think of how beneficial it would be to chat with myself, or another one of our marketing consultants one on one. Go ahead and visit our website to schedule your free consultation, it only takes a minute.