Steve Mehr: Differentiation, CRM, and SOPs for a Sweet Law Firm Growth

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Steve Mehr discuss:

• Importance of CRM and data-driven approaches in law practice management
• Strategies for scaling a law firm efficiently
• The role of marketing and brand differentiation in legal industry success
• Balancing multiple roles and responsibilities within a growing practice

Key Takeaways:

• A customized CRM system is essential for tracking key performance metrics, enabling predictive analytics, better budgeting, and preventing lawyers from running their practices without measurable results.
• Scaling a law firm effectively requires standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure consistent case outcomes, enabling firms to handle more cases successfully as they grow.
• A unique brand name like “Sweet James” helped Steve’s firm stand out in a competitive legal market by attracting clients through a distinctive identity while minimizing the focus on ego.
• Regular short team meetings that focus on daily priorities, obstacles, and urgent issues help keep everyone aligned, improving both efficiency and clarity for the entire team.

“If you’re not tracking the data, that means you can’t measure it, and if you’re not measuring your data, then you’re probably in law as a hobby.” —  Steve Mehr

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Thank you to our Sponsors!

Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/

Rainmakers Roundtable: https://www.fretzin.com/lawyer-coaching-and-training/peer-advisory-groups/

Episode References: 

Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish: https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Up-Companies-Rockefeller-Habits/dp/0986019526

About Steve Mehr: Steve Mehr is the founding partner of Sweet James, one of the largest and most respected personal injury law firms in the U.S. With over two decades of experience, Steve specializes in representing victims of catastrophic injuries, product liability, vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, and more, overseeing hundreds of millions in recoveries for clients. As a business leader, Steve is passionate about helping businesses grow. Using his proprietary CRM software, he fueled rapid growth at his firm, which he later sold for multiple seven figures. Steve now offers unique insights into scaling and managing businesses. Outside of work, he is dedicated to mentorship and philanthropy, supporting local charities to help those in need.

Connect with Steve Mehr:  

Website: https://sweetjames.com/

Email: steve@sweetjames.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sweetjames/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey listeners, I know you’re getting a ton of amazing tips from our expert guests here on the show, but keeping track of them can be a challenge. I know that. That’s why I’ve created Blogcasts, the perfect way to capture the best insights from every episode. Each Blogcast condenses an entire show into a two page summary packed with key takeaways that you can apply right away.

[00:00:21] Steve Fretzin: Head over to Fretzin. com slash blog to start reading, learning, and taking action. Let these blog casts help you on your journey to be that lawyer with Fretzin. Now enjoy the show

[00:00:35] Narrator: 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 

[00:00:56] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome back, it’s Steve Fretzin This is the Be That Lawyer podcast.

[00:01:02] Steve Fretzin: If you are a new time listener, first time listener, welcome, happy to have you and hopefully you’re going to enjoy the show and get a lot of great takeaways. If you are a long time listener and you guys are pinging me here and there and I appreciate that, don’t be shy about telling people about the show.

[00:01:16] Steve Fretzin: Continue to spread the word and let’s continue to expand how many lawyers we can help year after year doing this crazy show. So we are at you twice a week, every single week. We’re starting something new too called blogcasts, so we’re taking these interviews, we’re condensing them down to about a two page article, highlight reel if you will, and we’re going to be posting those on social, posting them on my website Fretzin.

[00:01:39] Steve Fretzin: com, so we probably already have them. You know, a half a dozen up. So if you’re interested, check out our blog cast on Fretzin. com. All right. Enough about that. Steve, how’s it going, man? Good to see you. 

[00:01:49] Steve Mehr: Excellent. Good seeing you, Steve. 

[00:01:50] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I love your name, by the way, Steve. It’s really by the way, are there any Steve’s anymore?

[00:01:56] Steve Fretzin: Did they die with us? Are there Steve’s coming out? Somebody names their baby Steve, 

[00:02:01] Steve Mehr: you point something good out. I 

[00:02:02] Steve Fretzin: don’t know. 

[00:02:03] Steve Mehr: Maybe Steve’s 

[00:02:04] Steve Fretzin: there’s no baby Steve’s. That’s like they, it’s like my mother’s name was Muriel. There ain’t no Muriel’s anymore. Right. And probably Karen’s going to go away soon.

[00:02:12] Steve Fretzin: Pretty too. My mom’s name is 

[00:02:14] Steve Mehr: Gina. And you don’t see Gina’s anymore. 

[00:02:16] Steve Fretzin: It’s like a whole new generation of, of names. All right. Well, we, as you know, folks love to start the show with the quote of the show. And Steve and I kind of discussed. Thanks Maybe I would do my own quote today, and then I’ll ask you what you think about it.

[00:02:28] Steve Fretzin: So we’re doing a little flipparoo here. I put out these Fretzin isms on LinkedIn every once in a while, things that I come up with and think they’re good enough to share. If they weren’t, I’d scrap them right away. This one is make your own hope. What do you think about that? Make your own hope. I like 

[00:02:44] Steve Mehr: that.

[00:02:45] Steve Fretzin: I like it a lot. 

[00:02:47] Steve Mehr: You know, I, 

[00:02:47] Steve Fretzin: I, yeah. What do you think? So then he, yeah, 

[00:02:49] Steve Mehr: go a little deeper. So much deeper. My middle name is Omid and my father’s Persian and Omid actually means hope. Oh, there we go. Oh so he made his own hope. Yeah. I grew up with the mentality of just, you know, having an immigrant father, if you need a helping hand, it’s, you could find it in two places at the end of each of your arms.

[00:03:09] Steve Mehr: So, you know, so that kind of goes into make your own hope as well. So, yeah, 

[00:03:14] Steve Fretzin: I had a lawyer father, so it was a whole different set of problems I had being put on the cross every day. And dad, I’m just in kindergarten. What are you grilling me? The other thing is, I love the movie Shawshank, and that whole movie is about hope.

[00:03:26] Steve Fretzin: Andy Dufresne needs his, needs hope to get through it, and I always talk about in business development that, you know, hope is not your friend. We need to make our own hope, and so I think that’s really where that quote stemmed from is, Yeah. We can sit and wait for the phone to ring and hope that the calls are coming in.

[00:03:42] Steve Fretzin: Ultimately we need to go and we need to produce and then we can, we have more guarantees that things are going to work out. So there’s that. 

[00:03:49] Steve Mehr: I agree. Action is the solution to most problems in life. 

[00:03:53] Steve Fretzin: There you go. All right. There we go. Another quote. So we’re on a roll. Steve Mayer, everybody is the founder of Sweet James Injury Law Firm.

[00:04:02] Steve Fretzin: And I want to hear about your background, but I also want you to talk to us about the name Sweet James, because I think of typical law firms, you know, Dewey, Cheatham and Howe or whatever the joke is, you know, just the names of the founders and you went a different direction. So give us your background and leading into the name and scaling up and everything you’ve done.

[00:04:20] Steve Mehr: Okay. Yeah. I ended up in law school because in a prior life I was in the consumer electronics industry and I got sued by a manufacturer and I was, I think, 20 years old at the time. And I was terrified. I was smart enough to have insurance covered the claim, but I quickly realized that if I was going to be a better business person, I better go to law school and understand the system.

[00:04:45] Steve Mehr: Ended up winning that lawsuit while I was in law school. And miraculously, I got a check for 280, 000. Oh, I understand what happened in the process. Yeah. But but yeah, so that’s kind of what drove me to law school. I got into law school, graduated in 2001, really didn’t start practicing for another few years after that, after I sold my, the various businesses I had around consumer electronics.

[00:05:08] Steve Mehr: And when I got into law, I realized that there’s, it’s a high margin business and most lawyers don’t quite understand the business side of law. And coming from a low margin business, understanding data, understanding your KPIs, understanding inventory. You know, all of the very basic business principles, you know, at that time, you know, it was something lawyers struggle with.

[00:05:33] Steve Mehr: So one of the first things I developed back in 2005 or six was a custom CRM. This is before there was all these cloud CRMs. And I think back then people were either on needles or, you know, all sorts of things. Maybe like 

[00:05:46] Steve Fretzin: ACT. Yeah. ACT was a big one back in the day. 

[00:05:49] Steve Mehr: Right. ADE software. So, and through that I was able to scale a few firms.

[00:05:55] Steve Mehr: I ended up selling a few firms in my first five, six years out, interfaced with, started doing some consulting for firms, got involved with a, with a larger firm, kind of brought that brand back to life. Ended up exiting in 2018. And in 2019 partnered up with James and we, discuss what the name of the firm should be.

[00:06:21] Steve Mehr: And it started with discussing our last names and James’s nickname is sweet James, and he really is a sweet guy. So I said, you know what? The last year of the state bar allowed trade names. Let’s go with sweet, let’s go with sweet James. And he was like, are you sure that’s going to work? So we took a little bit of a leap of faith, but yeah the market is hyper.

[00:06:44] Steve Mehr: And we really needed a unique differentiator in the marketplace. So that’s kind of, you know, where the name came from. Obviously it’s, it’s James’s nickname. But I thought for every client that would not hire a sweet chick, there’s going to be two people that the name is unique enough that would be attracted to the brand and they would hire a sweet chick.

[00:07:05] Steve Mehr: And that’s how it was seeded in the show. I 

[00:07:07] Steve Fretzin: mean, probably my favorite part of the story, and I love Sweet James, I just, and of course I think of James Taylor and Sweet Baby James and all that, but I think the thing that strikes me more than any of it is the lack of ego of you having to have your name on the door.

[00:07:21] Steve Fretzin: I mean, that’s, I think says a lot about you and it says a lot about your business acumen that you’re willing to forego what most lawyers would not. 

[00:07:30] Steve Mehr: Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think we set out to kind of really scale and dominate the space. And I think if, if, if that is your overarching goal, then you need to kind of take an egoless approach.

[00:07:42] Steve Mehr: I know even, even James is like, well, I don’t, you know, I’m not particularly comfortable being on TV and doing all this stuff, but you know, like even for him now, he loves doing it. It’s something that he’s magic at it, but no, it was definitely it pushed everybody outside their comfort zone. 

[00:07:59] Steve Fretzin: And I like that.

[00:07:59] Steve Fretzin: I’m complimenting you on taking the ego out of the name. My company’s Fretzin Inc. So go figure. I’m not, I’m not a hypocrite in complimenting you, right? I’m just a hypocrite. And then I did exactly that. What lawyers do. Okay. Here’s a hidden treasure, too, before I got into working with lawyers. My company was called Sales Results, Inc.

[00:08:17] Steve Fretzin: And so you as an entrepreneur can completely understand and appreciate a great name like Sales Results, Inc. Like what is a better name for a sales training company than that? And I had lawyers traveling around on the train and wherever with my materials. And they’re coming back to me telling me they were uncomfortable because it was, it was salesy and I’m supposed to, you know, they don’t want to ever be seen that way or whatever.

[00:08:40] Steve Fretzin: And I was like, okay, and I pulled the trigger. I said, would it be easier if I just called it fret snake? They’re like, yes, thank you, please. So anyway, that’s a little hidden story there about my background in there, but let’s get into the weeds though. I, you mentioned the CRM and I was just having a chat today with one of my rainmaker roundtables about it.

[00:08:56] Steve Fretzin: And I think there’s confusion about CRM is a client relationship management tool. Yeah. And it can be used at the big firm level. It can be used at the solo level. You obviously found you needed to customize something for your firms, but what’s the value of a CRM to a lawyer at any level? 

[00:09:13] Steve Mehr: Right. I think in order to be competitive in this field, you really have to take a data driven approach.

[00:09:22] Steve Mehr: And I don’t see how you could do that without a CRM. That has all the fields in order to track the right data, because if you’re not tracking the data, that means you can’t measure it. And if you’re not measuring your data, then you’re probably in law as a hobby. So I can’t imagine any, anybody that takes their role seriously that does not have a CR.

[00:09:47] Steve Mehr: That there isn’t a repository. Well, you just 

[00:09:48] Steve Fretzin: pissed off 90 percent of the attorneys. Well. Cause they’re not, they don’t have a CRM and they’re not looking at the data. So, I guess we’re, you know, for shame. I 

[00:09:58] Steve Mehr: mean, it’s just, you need a system to collect the data. You need a system to manage the data. And then you need a systems to analyze the data.

[00:10:07] Steve Mehr: And your key metrics in order to get to a point where you have some sort of predictive analytics. So you could put a budget together for the next 12 months and have some rough understanding, everything from cashflow, what your client acquisition costs, what your, you know, quality score is, what your, you know, pretty much every flow workflow you have within the system, that’s going to be tracked within CRM.

[00:10:34] Steve Mehr: And if you know how to use the data properly, you. should be in a position to model the data about. So like at our firm, I mean, obviously we’re, we’re a lot larger. We have 400 employees, 50 lawyers, but we have data analysts. We have multiple people on the you know, software development team. We’re in the business intelligence, all sorts of things like that.

[00:10:56] Steve Mehr: So there’s no way you could hit any kind of scale. If you’re not managing, 

[00:11:00] Steve Fretzin: yeah, well, in the other piece of CRMs, that is, I don’t think this is a new thing, but it’s something that, that I’m using pretty regularly, which is, which are automation. Some of the newer ones are the better ones have customized automations.

[00:11:13] Steve Fretzin: I’ll give, you know, we all know about Calendly and Acuity, but you can customize them right into your calendar through like Lawmatics, for example, which I use, I have all of my contacts in categories, client strategic partner, you know, podcast guest, whatever it might be. And I can send them direct emails that look like an email versus a newsletter if I want to communicate with a hundred people all at once, but make it look like I’m individual.

[00:11:40] Steve Fretzin: So those kinds of tools I think also add a lot of value to how you market and, and again, try https: otter. ai

[00:11:57] Steve Fretzin: The problem that lawyers are having generally, I mean, other than people problems, cause that’s always a thing. I mean, we’ll, we’ll get into that as well, but it’s that they’re wearing every hat. There are a dozen hats that a lawyer is wearing and I’m not going to go through them all, but it’s, you know, what I’m saying is I’m, is you’re listening to this, everybody, what I’m talking about, the hats, how does someone navigate all those hats and then slowly start to lower down and get into.

[00:12:24] Steve Fretzin: Seven hats down to five down to three, you know, hopefully two at some point. 

[00:12:30] Steve Mehr: I wish I had an answer for 

[00:12:31] Steve Fretzin: you. 

[00:12:35] Steve Mehr: What is this interview about anyway? I know. You know, obviously when you first start, you have to be a generalist, meaning that you have to sit in every single seat and that, and that doesn’t change as revenues increase, you know, the thought process behind buying some of your time back, or at least Allowing yourself to put your time into the highest average tasks.

[00:12:57] Steve Mehr: That’s really the path that everybody should be on. What are my highest leveraged tasks? What am I the low leverage tasks? And every employee you hire should be sitting in the low leverage tasks. Yeah. And then, you know, over time, you know, hopefully you make enough revenue that then you could. Higher paid people that can handle some of the high leverage tasks, but it doesn’t, you know, but this reprioritizing throughout the day doesn’t change whether you have five people, 50 people or 500 people.

[00:13:28] Steve Mehr: I mean, this is something that’s, that’s going to be constant as a firm owner. And you know, there’s days where I’m in the weeds in accounting with an issue, or I’m in the weeds with case management this year, and then next, you know, I’m in a high level meeting about AI in the CRM and, you know, how we can manipulate our data.

[00:13:45] Steve Mehr: So it’s just that constant vacillation is happening, even at, even at the stage that we’re in, but I think being comfortable and conscious that you’re reprioritizing all day long. It’s something that people I think don’t put enough thought into. I, even today, every day, I pause almost hourly and say, am I working on the highest leverage tasks?

[00:14:10] Steve Mehr: And if the answer is no, I’ve left emails half written. I’ve walked out of meetings. I’m like, I’m not doing what the highest leverage tasks are. I need to keep interfacing with those items. And I think that’s something that, Lawyers, because I think we’re classically trained to analyze and get in the weeds on every issue.

[00:14:27] Steve Mehr: Maybe they get stuck a lot and they end up a week goes by and they’re like, Oh shit, I’ve worked in the business, but I haven’t worked on the business. I haven’t do the things that are required for me to move the business forward. Yeah. That really does take a conscious. Effort throughout the day. And, you know, just make sure that you can set an alarm or you could put it on your Apple watch, but just, you know, set triggers.

[00:14:48] Steve Mehr: So to get in the mode of just constantly reprioritize, it’ll make a huge impact. 

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[00:15:52] Steve Fretzin: The other thing I recommend is for lawyers to actually pick a day, like let’s say tomorrow, and track your entire day. And write down what you did. Well, I just surf, you know, LinkedIn for a half an hour. And then I was on a call with somebody who’s trying to sell me insurance. And then I was talking to, you know, interviewing a bookkeeping company.

[00:16:13] Steve Fretzin: And then I would, and just the whole day and then next to that task in the time that it took, write down what you think that hourly rate should be for that task. And I think if you do that in a day and you start to realize you’ve got hours of time. To your point, Steve, that aren’t in your best task, skill, whatever it might be, purpose.

[00:16:35] Steve Fretzin: And that’s going to give you some indication of how sort of dysfunctional you are, or give you some incentive to want to make some changes and, you know, get your books done by a bookkeeper. Get your Marketing done by a VA like there’s all these alternatives now that we’ve been beating the drum on with this show for a long Time but you know and a lot of lawyers I think should be getting out of practicing the law and in getting in the weeds with client stuff, right?

[00:16:58] Steve Fretzin: I mean, that’s how do you do that? How does a look I don’t you can help me with that But I’ll put it out to you. How does a lawyer that’s building a staff and looking to scale eventually get out of Being the name and the guy the gal, the perp that everyone needs to talk to, do you have a feeling about that or experience?

[00:17:16] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. 

[00:17:16] Steve Mehr: I mean, you raise a lot of good points. I agree that goal management or time management is something that everybody should become an expert in. And look, you can just read a few books, watch a few YouTube videos. It’s not that hard. So if people aren’t willing to at least start there, then there probably is no help for them.

[00:17:31] Steve Mehr: But as far as evolving your role within a firm, I think a lot of it is ego. I know it’s something you touched on earlier. It’s very easy to be like, I’m the most. knowledgeable person and everything that happens in this firm and kind of inject yourself at that crossroad. But that you’re doing that to stoke your ego.

[00:17:49] Steve Mehr: So, you know, so I think a lot of these things will naturally progress. Your role will naturally progress if you remove the ego from it. If you realize, yeah, someone else can maybe do this. Task or this job or have this role and maybe they’re going to do it 85 percent as good as me and but and I’ll create a system or process for that 15%.

[00:18:10] Steve Mehr: It’s not as good as me in order to like, make sure that quality level or that you see is where I want. And I think if you approach things in that way, you’re able to scale up much faster. It’s easier for you to find the right people into the right and put the right people into the right seats. You know, I also talk to a lot of firm members like, oh, no one can do what I do.

[00:18:29] Steve Mehr: Nobody can do this in my firm. You, I’m just thinking to myself like, you gotta look in the mirror. Right? This is not, this isn’t you issue. Other people have figured it out. Yeah. We put people on, trust me, you could figure out how to reduce the amount of time you spend putting out fires or interacting on a particular process.

[00:18:47] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been on the phone with a lawyer who was the biggest name in Chicago. And that was a 15 minute call and never spoke to him again, ever, because that was not his thing. His thing was to. Sell the firm or it was to just, you know, whatever, have that first touch. And then, Hey, you got to deal with my team.

[00:19:07] Steve Fretzin: My team is what’s going to win the day for you. And then they converted me to a team and I never thought twice about it, but that’s what a lot of lawyers are missing is the ability to take a team approach into say, look, yeah, I know you called for me. That’s great. And I’m going to be, you know, staying involved with you, but this is how we do things.

[00:19:25] Steve Fretzin: This is how we’re going to work as a team to get you the best results. And I’ll be monitoring from a, you know, from above or whatever it might be, but you don’t have to be the one that’s getting all the calls and dealing with all this stuff and being in court and all that stuff. It’s not, that’s not for everybody.

[00:19:39] Steve Fretzin: And so again, you got to look at what’s your best. Use to grow is what’s your best value to the business, not just your legal prowess. 

[00:19:48] Steve Mehr: Yeah. You raise a good point. And we also do take a team approach, even though James is the face of our advertising, he interfaces with very few clients at all. And it is that team approach.

[00:20:00] Steve Mehr: And really what you’re raising is expectation setting at the beginning from clients. If you set the expectations properly, then the clients don’t have a problem dealing with. Someone other than the face of the firm or someone other than a named part, you know, in our firm, you know, like I said, we have 50 plus lawyers and none of our name, including my own name, you know, is not right.

[00:20:21] Steve Fretzin: Right. Right. And 

[00:20:22] Steve Mehr: very rarely does a client demand to talk to, let’s say James, because from the beginning, the expectations are set properly. They understand it’s a team approach. They understand what everybody’s role is within the team. And like you said, with your experience, it’s fairly a seamless process from beginning to end, but if you don’t set that expectation at the beginning, then you’re going to end up with scenarios where you’re pulled into fires right and left, and clients are demanding to talk to the named partner or the face of the firm.

[00:20:52] Steve Mehr: And that just creates a really inefficient process. Processed and on a very bad out. 

[00:20:58] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So then what would you say are two or three of your most prized? Tips that you would share with lawyers who they may not need or want to scale today They’re just trying to make ends meet whatever the case might be But I think it’s important to just what are the kind of the main things that you’ve learned in your time and that you could share With my audience about scaling 

[00:21:19] Steve Mehr: well I’ll start with, you know, you have to get your marketing right, you have to get your operations right, you have to get your people right.

[00:21:27] Steve Mehr: So from a marketing strategy for us, it was just having a very differentiated name that could stand up and stand out in the marketplace, you know, and you’ve got with a compelling vision internally. So from an operation standpoint is I think a lot of lawyers don’t have standard operating procedures. So if when you’re small.

[00:21:50] Steve Mehr: You can treat each case differently, and maybe you’ll get a great result, maybe you won’t, but if you’re at scale, you have to get that great result every single time. So you have to have processes that sometimes are even more cumbersome than getting it right once, or if you were just handling it. So how do we have an excellent result every single time as to each workflow?

[00:22:11] Steve Mehr: And that takes a lot of round tabling, sitting down, mapping out the processes. Having a CRM, being able to measure that those processes are being handled properly. So, I think that’s where a lot of people, a lot of people can handle 10 cases successfully. Maybe with a great result, but, you know, how do you handle, you know, 100 cases?

[00:22:34] Steve Mehr: And then how do you handle 500 cases? How do you handle 1, 000 cases with a great result? Because as large as we are, we’re not a million. We actually actively litigate thousands of files. We just had a record verdict in Kings County for 17. 5 million just last week, super conservative county on auto accident case.

[00:22:51] Steve Mehr: So despite our size, we still run very boutique, but we’re able to do that because of the amount of effort and time that we’ve put into each of our processes in order to guarantee or ensure that we get a great outcome every single time. And I think that’s the challenge when you scale. That’s the challenge when you go up to one to two lawyers.

[00:23:14] Steve Mehr: Right. When that first lawyer you hire, if you don’t have proper systems and processes in place. You’re essentially going to measure them over a period of years on the job and that doesn’t make any sense. Like, so you should be able to add two, three, four lawyers and the process should always be the same.

[00:23:32] Steve Mehr: And the training should be the same in order to ensure some minimal acceptable out time. So I think that’s where a lot of failures happen. 

[00:23:40] Steve Fretzin: And real quick, I mean, CRM, which we’ve now talked about a number of times in SOP standard operating procedures. I mean, those are. Maybe the two areas that lawyers that are trying to scale or considering scaling fail on the most.

[00:23:52] Steve Fretzin: I mean, they don’t have those. They’re just, I need, I’m busy and I need to hire a lawyer. So they hire a lawyer. They’re overwhelmed with work. They don’t have time to train. There’s no SOPs. There’s no CRM. There’s no tracking and they wonder why it fails and why that person leaves after a year or why they, you know.

[00:24:09] Steve Fretzin: So I think what you’re sharing is that without that structure and organization, you’re sort of setting yourself up to fail. So get the structure and organization in place first. 

[00:24:17] Steve Mehr: Absolutely. And, and everybody you hire should have absolute clarity in how do I articulate this? Everybody that shows up in my operation should know every single day if they had a successful day, every single week, every single month.

[00:24:35] Steve Mehr: And I don’t think people quite look at the people they hire that way. Why? I want to make sure that they have clarity of purpose when they show up and I reduce their stress level as much as possible. So if an employee shows up and understands what a successful day looks like, their stress level is going to go down and their output is going to go up considerably.

[00:24:53] Steve Mehr: So how do you do that is making sure that every seat in your office from the receptionist to the mail clerk to your paralegal understands what those KPIs, those key performance metrics are. We generally assign three to five metrics per seat. And so meaning that in order to be a successful relation receptionist.

[00:25:15] Steve Mehr: You need to answer X number of calls per day. You need to do this, you need to do that. So case managers, calling your clients, you know, percentage of policies obtained. You know, there’s different metrics for each seat. So from lawyers all the way on down. And, and what they are is going to be different from firm to firm or from lawyer to lawyer depending on the size of the team and how the work is divvied up.

[00:25:40] Steve Mehr: But if lawyers spent some time engineering that particular employee’s seat and what is required for them to have a successful day and what a successful week and what a successful month looks like, that will help supercharge not only their firm, that also creates a very strong positive culture because now you have a bunch of happy employees where the stress is being managed from the top.

[00:26:05] Steve Mehr: And when people show up and they have an amazing day and it’s measured and they understand why they had an amazing day, they can repeat that outcome over and over again. And you build a very strong culture from ability of people to have clarity in their job. 

[00:26:21] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, well it’s really great. And that’s, again, these are a lot of the things you’re sharing, Steve, are, you know, what I would consider to be foreign ideas to many attorneys who are, you know, winging it.

[00:26:33] Steve Fretzin: And this show is all about helping them to live their best lawyer life and to get, and get ideas that are gonna make them better and make less mistakes. And so I think these are some critical areas. Is there one, we have time for real? One more short, one tip on scaling. 

[00:26:50] Steve Mehr: Tip on scaling is, I’m going to go back to just taking a data driven approach, you know, focus on your key priorities, constantly check yourself against, make sure you have a good meeting rhythm with your team, even if your team is one paralegal, you know, I have multiple teams, obviously, but every single day we do a five minute standing meeting and it is to just frame the day.

[00:27:14] Steve Mehr: What’s your priority? This is my priority. And I asked the same three questions whether I’m doing a team meeting with one person or 10 people. And it is what’s your obstacle to getting your work done today? Are there any fires that I need to be in the loop on? Is there any urgent issues that needs my attention?

[00:27:32] Steve Mehr: And that’s it. It’s the same questions. And I force an answer, like an articulate answer to each of those. And if it’s with one person, you can get through this in two or three minutes, but it’s about framing your day and being aligned and what the, or what success that day looks like. And I think if you can do that, it’s even if you put scaling aside, it will allow you to run much faster.

[00:27:54] Steve Mehr: I equate it to like rowing, right? If everybody’s rowing at the same time. You know, whether it’s two people or 10 people in that boat, the momentum you’re going to get is going to be much more than it was just. Too many law firm owners go to the office, they don’t even know what half their team is doing.

[00:28:10] Steve Mehr: They’re not aligned in what that day’s outcome is. So I think it’s just taking very small steps and these are very small measurable steps that if you implement it by the end of next week, you’ll be like, Oh shit, I got some, I got some serious results out of being aligned with my team. 

[00:28:25] Steve Fretzin: So many great tips and wisdom that you’re sharing, Steve, I appreciate it so much.

[00:28:28] Steve Fretzin: We’re going to wrap up with with your game changing book and it should come to no surprise to anybody listening. It’s called scaling up. So tell us why you love that book. I have a feeling I know the answer, but 

[00:28:39] Steve Mehr: yeah, I mean, yeah, Steve. So when Steve asked me what my favorite book is, I said, it’s scaling up by Vern Harnish.

[00:28:45] Steve Mehr: And I really think for professional service organizations, there isn’t a whole lot of material that makes sense. And that book really dives into how to manage people, how to have. leadership development, hiring, retaining talent, it gets into how to execute, you know, if your firm’s doing less than a million or two, I would probably leave the strategy section of the book out for, you know, from a practicality standpoint.

[00:29:11] Steve Mehr: I mean, if you’re doing more revenues than that, then this strategy section makes sense. But I think it’s a very good, easy read to give you insight of kind of the type of things that you need to have your eyes on and what to prioritize as you scale your business. 

[00:29:27] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, just awesome. Thanks so much. And as we wrap up, I want to thank our sponsors, of course, Rankings.

[00:29:31] Steve Fretzin: io, who’s helping everybody on the marketing. You know, Rankings. io, I mean, they’re marketing, you know, SEO, pay per click, website, all that jazz. They’re awesome. And of course, shout out to Sonia Palmer, hosts an amazing show for women in law called LawHer. Check it out. And of course, I’m going to promote our Rainmakers Roundtable.

[00:29:49] Steve Fretzin: If you are a managing partner listening right now, or you work for a managing partner that is all about making it rain. They should be in a room with other successful managing partners and rainmakers learning from them and working with me and coming together. So they’re off their island. I think shared experience, Steve, maybe you feel that way too.

[00:30:06] Steve Fretzin: Like, you know, learning from others is a great way to make less mistakes. And so that’s what this rainmaker round table is all about. 

[00:30:14] Steve Mehr: Absolutely. I think having mentors or having peers that have gone through it. Before you definitely clears the path, it gives you a little bit of clarity on your journey. I still have a ton of mentors and I think it’s absolutely necessary in order to move faster than what is average.

[00:30:32] Steve Mehr: Yeah. 

[00:30:33] Steve Fretzin: I may hit you up to come speak to my group because of your background. They’ve made it. Yeah. They might be really interested to hear your story and also to pick your brain because they’re so curious about. Not only scaling, but again, a lot of them are ranked making a rain, but they’re still doing too much and wearing too many hats and all that.

[00:30:49] Steve Fretzin: So that may be a next step for us, my friend. Sounds good. If people, if people wanna learn about you or Sweet ba or Sweet baby James. Oh sweet James. What are the best ways to reach you? 

[00:30:59] Steve Mehr: Just sweet james.com and my I on profiles, but my email is steve@sweetjames.com so it’s really easy. S-T-E-V-E.

[00:31:06] Steve Mehr: That’s sweet. James. com. 

[00:31:08] Steve Fretzin: Awesome. The last of the Steve’s. That’s what we are. Listen, thank you. And thank you everybody for spending time with Steve and I today on the, be that lawyer with Fretzin podcasts. We are here at your request to continue to give you great ideas and and ensured wisdom to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker.

[00:31:26] Steve Fretzin: Take care, everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again very soon.

[00:31:34] Narrator: 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.