Strategies for Growth, Efficiency, and Market Competitiveness for Your Law Firm

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 7: Growth, Hiring and Outpacing the Competition with Brian Kennel

Brian Kennel: [00:00:00] If you can do it better and you can do it cheaper, then I have to ask you fundamentally, why aren't doing it? Like, why, why aren't the clients here? You ought to be beating them off with a stick. You ought to have so many of them that we ought to be raising

Narrator: price. Welcome to the Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms.

Narrator: Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the case fuel podcast. I'm your host, Jan Roos, and we're here today with Brian Kennel from Perform Law. So Brian has been practicing law firm consulting based out of Louisiana, and he's got some really interesting ideas on how firms are able to grow and scale in a way that's profitable and ultimately get to a point where they can do some really serious things with their practice.

Jan Roos: So thanks for coming on the show, Brian. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. We kind of have the high level overview of Perform Law, but would you mind [00:01:00] going into a little bit more detail about how you got started and how you got to the point you are today?

Brian Kennel: In the beginning, as I say, I was a law firm administrator for a large firm, and that, believe it or not, was also a time where innovation was starting to hit the law practice and business concepts and processes and things like that, and to come more to the forefront.

Brian Kennel: So it was kind of like that. The practice or the profession started to evolve into more business. And so while it was difficult and challenging, it was a really exciting time to be involved in law firm management. But, you know, like all things I was young when I got there and I decided, you know, after working my way up to the sort of top position in a law firm, I wasn't ever even going to be a legal.

Brian Kennel: And so there really wasn't a place for me to go, but I love doing it. And so, and I also wanted to start my own business. So I always had that kind of sense of, of kind of what I wanted my career to shape up like. So I did that and did a couple of those and one of them not [00:02:00] so good. One of them went well.

Brian Kennel: And then once I've sold that, did my earn out, I launched Perform Law because I really liked consulting. So we launched Perform Law back in 2003. And really I was just trying to get enough clients, had a You know, I wanted to just serve a handful of clients that had, you know, really focused needs and then this way I could, you know, control my schedule and do the things I want to do with my kids and just have a little bit more control over my schedule.

Brian Kennel: But as we've grown, and as the firm has succeeded, our clients need us Different approach than that. And maybe about three years ago, in earnest, we decided we wanted to try to serve clients on a more national basis and even international, you know, through the internet, web calling and those kinds of tools.

Brian Kennel: So it's been really the tale of two firms, you know, one that was really designed to necessarily kind of serve, you know, serve the needs of the clients, but kind of serve what I wanted to do with it. And now it's really more about, you know, what we can do for, and how we can help more [00:03:00] clients in more places and create more

Jan Roos: opportunities for you.

Jan Roos: And now the people that are in company. So we've had a pretty long journey going from 2003 all the way up to 2018 at this point, so we're, we're about 15 years down the road at this point, you know, you mentioned the changing needs of the law firm. Like, what do you think are the major trends that they're changing now versus when you started the practice?

Brian Kennel: When I started the practice, you know, it was kind of like exciting to get an automated time and billing system, you know, and document management was there and, you know, electronic document management, but mostly everything was, you know, then it was whether you were going to automate and then drive technology to the desktop or whether you're going to stay sort of in a centralized environment where you had tight controls over technology and only certain people had access to certain things.

Brian Kennel: And so clearly, you know, how that's gone. So with the. We're now with all the technology on the, on the desktop and internet access for all and cloud based apps and really, really, really smart people creating really, [00:04:00] really interesting ways of using technology and apps and cloud and everything else. The real benefit to it is that a small law firm, I don't know, maybe six, seven people all the way down to a solo practitioner.

Brian Kennel: Can really compete with anyone in certain spaces that don't require, say, lots and lots and lots of manpower, but you know, it was a huge barrier to entry for anybody who wanted to start a law firm 10 or 15 years ago was just the cost of the technology and the cost of the startup. And now you can start up and you can compete on a level, you know, in an afternoon,

Jan Roos: really.

Jan Roos: And that, I'm sure that kind of goes to your. Ability to scale across different parts of the country too, because it's not just these people who have these giant firms, these giant budgets that are bringing the retainers these days. It could be anyone who can really figure out this technology, which is kind of exciting on some level, but I could imagine the level of competition has risen a bit too, because those barriers to entry are no longer keeping new upstarts from entering the markets.

Brian Kennel: Yeah, it's true. And as I'll tell you, it's very difficult. You know, you take your average senior partner and [00:05:00] you run into a lot of this sort of philosophical struggles or even kind of where people are in their career. And so you might have the power in a law firm, you know, maybe concentrated among, you know, guys in their sixties, for example, and they're kind of looking at it like, look, if I can, they look at technology and innovation and all of this change is something that they want, you know, by and large, not all of them.

Brian Kennel: But a lot of them look at it like. All I got to do is outrun it for two or three more years, and it'll be somebody else's problem. Instead of looking at it like, what a huge opportunity to do things differently, you know, than I've ever done them, do more things for more people, even though those things that you're doing for those people may not necessarily generate huge legal fees.

Brian Kennel: It doesn't matter. It's a different business model. And so you focus more on, you know, how you deliver your services, what you do for people, you know, how you help people, how you solve their problem and not necessarily on I've got to, I've got to make my hours this year. I've got to make, I've got to build this much or it'll cut my points.

Brian Kennel: [00:06:00] And so, you know, in a lot of ways, technology, people are threatened by it. But I see it as a huge opportunity. And and frankly, it's an opportunity to take that as that, which is sort of truly mundane about what it is a lawyer does all day long and automate that and

Jan Roos: allow them to, you know, to use more of their creativity, right?

Jan Roos: And we just wrapped up a series with the law firm 500. It seems kind of counterintuitive, but these days it really seems like the firms that are growing the fastest. Tend to be the ones that are focusing on this process stuff. And this is probably in stark contrast, the way things were 25 or 50 years ago, where it was sort of a, you know, hang up your shingle at the best lawyer.

Jan Roos: When it seems that the people that if anyone hasn't been considering, you know, the power of these sorts of things, you know, this is how you're either going to break through and start eating the competition's lunch or how the competition's going to break in and start eating your lunch. So it's definitely a really important thing to focus on.

Jan Roos: And that kind of gives us the opportunity to segue a little bit. So, you know, huge volume of stuff that you guys are doing over for law firms over at Perform Law. So I guess the first question is, you know, usually when somebody [00:07:00] comes in and says, Hey, look how do I grow my law firm? Big hairy question, but, but how are you guys thinking about that?

Jan Roos: And that the priority of things that you'd introduce.

Brian Kennel: Well, you know, typically they don't necessarily say, how do I grow my law firm? They say, you know, we need more clients and we need more business. Okay. And so, you know, which I understand, you know, growth tends to be sort of characterized in terms of, you know, clients coming through the door or, you know, fee revenues collected or whatever.

Brian Kennel: But really first thing we do is kind of challenge them to consider, you know, to, to, to define growth in better terms, for example, growth in the organization, growth in what the organization can do growth in, you know, the organization's ability to deliver services. Competitively better pace than their competition, you know, the ability to pay at or above market because their, their processes are efficient, you know, we look at pricing policies and say, look, is there an opportunity in the market for, you know, unique way to price these services?

Brian Kennel: And so it's really important when you start that growth [00:08:00] discussion, you know, that you, first thing we like to focus on here is getting our clients focused on. Let's define what growth really is. Is it growth just in revenue? Is it growth in profit? Is it growth? and capability. Is it better efficiency innovation?

Brian Kennel: What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

Jan Roos: Yeah, very important question as well, because people kind of just have this onwards and upwards mentality about things. But the reality is, it's like, you know, you're going to get what you start setting these numbers towards and having kind of the outside counsel to really say, okay, look, what's this is a very, very important process.

Jan Roos: This is something that we've heard a lot in this past season. We had, when it comes to growing a law firm, a lot of the times it's almost easier to just think about how to get more cases out there. But, you know, we've seen a lot of the people that have gone through this journey and have been very successful the way out is.

Jan Roos: Getting a really good team around them. And, you know, there's a lot of ways that these other people have sliced it from the ones that we've interviewed so far. I'd really like to talk to you, Brian, about how to attract A players. And, you know, some of the stuff that [00:09:00] you guys do around comp structure is really interesting.

Jan Roos: So do you mind speaking about that a bit?

Brian Kennel: Yeah. The cost structure is critical for a number. If you have a competitive cost structure that allows you to, you know, drive a different bargain and marketplace. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you know, it's not just we're coming in at the lowest possible price, but if you understand your cost structure and you have it under control, you can price, you know, can impact your price.

Brian Kennel: And so you can price, and I use that, use that word specifically, because it's not really just what you bake into your hours. rate, you know, alternative forms of pricing. And so if you got a good handle on your cost structure, you can start to look at it the way what you're really trying to find is kind of a market bit at a certain price point for a certain level of service.

Brian Kennel: And if you can find that and you can engineer your cost structure to make margin on that, you're in pretty good shape. You know, the market kind of knows what it wants to pay for things. And for the, you know, those people that are in the rarefied air where they're so unique, they can charge, you know, pretty much what they want for what they do.[00:10:00]

Brian Kennel: You know, Clearly the cost structure is important, but it's more important as a matter of housekeeping. They don't necessarily live and die on their cost structure, you know, there are things that are more important to people. But for the overwhelming majority of law firms, if you have a bloated or inefficient cost structure and you don't understand, you know, what drives, really drives the cost in a small to mid sized law firm, which is what we focus on, then you're going to just constantly just watch your bottom line erode and you're going to have.

Brian Kennel: Very little power do anything about it because your clients are just not going to agree to keep increasing your rate. So we drill in really hard on that cost structure and we try to get our clients to understand right on down to the cost per hour. And honestly, the cost to provide certain service in a certain way.

Brian Kennel: And we look at, you know, before we increase pay. Price, which, you know, it's harder to do. The first thing we look at is, Hey, can we write, read, re engineer this? Can we either automate part of this? And we can, we ship the workload around, you know, look for things and opportunities to create margins in house.

Brian Kennel: And then we go drive the [00:11:00] market or try to drive the market with our clients, because we know at least that we're efficient and we know that our competitors, you know, if we're efficient, we at least have

Jan Roos: that

Brian Kennel: advantage over our

Jan Roos: competitors. So we've got this initial drill down that's happening when somebody ends up working with Brian.

Jan Roos: And I'm sure you guys see a lot of different law firms, not only the ones that end up signing with you, but I'm sure, you know, some sort of this investigation is happening before you sign a client. Now, like based on this giant set of data that you have, what would you say are some of the common pitfalls that are driving up the costs in a law firm that are prevented from scaling?

Brian Kennel: Yes, it's kind of interesting. First of all, you know, law firms are typically, you know, I'd say still the majority of some of the younger, you know, more innovative ones don't see it this way, but they, they all have to have a lot of space, you know, lots of conference rooms, lots of space. If you want to drill it down.

Brian Kennel: Right to the specific and while a lot of them talk about letting people work remotely and taking advantage of that, they don't really are not really comfortable with, you know, using that as an [00:12:00] advantage. And so typically the things that drive up costs are. You know, space and capital that really for the average client than anything doesn't help them or their case one way, at least from their point of view.

Brian Kennel: The second thing is, you know, salaries and law firms have this sort of tendency to collect people. And what I mean by that is, you know, someone will come in and they're smart and they can do a certain thing and they can do that thing really, really well. It's really kind of nice to have that. Person there, because they can do that thing, but they only get a request for that thing and only have a demand for that service, you know, sporadically.

Brian Kennel: And so you wind up having this sort of collection of people with skill sets and talent that are idle half time, and it's really hard to overcome that. So the thing that drives up cost most in a law firm is a lack of focus around, you know, a finite level of things that they can do and do really well.

Jan Roos: Right. And then digging down a little bit into that. Challenge of having the really good resource that's happening, you know, infrequently, a couple of ways that [00:13:00] people can usually do that, especially with some of the new advances in technology we were speaking about earlier. Now, are you typically recommending people kind of go for maybe that remote stuff that you were talking about, or maybe getting a council relationship or, you know, how do you generally advise people to go about remedying this?

Brian Kennel: Well, on the on the staffing side, you know, it's pretty straightforward. It's better. It's a core. If it's a core practice area and assuming you have, you can define what your core practice areas are, then, you know, make your investments there, you know, make a 90 percent of your investments in your core practice areas and make sure that those run really, really effectively.

Brian Kennel: If you want to take 10 or 15 percent of your investments every year and put them into, for example, with people, you know, a little bit more speculative type hiring, maybe you want to, maybe you think you could provide a service. You think it could be a real future benefit for you, then, you know, put 10 or 15 percent of your budget into that.

Brian Kennel: And then, you know, you can handle your people that way. But just for keeping people around that, you know, it might be really [00:14:00] interesting to have, and it's nice to say that you like those services. You sort of can't fall into the trap of believing that the market wants something that it really doesn't want from you and, you know, sort of like defining the way I want the market to see me rather than the way the market really sees me, and I think once you appreciate what it is that the market really sees in you and what your real value proposition is, then I think those other decisions about, you know, other practice areas, other investments and people.

Brian Kennel: You know, things like that get clearer as far as the space is concerned. You know, I think if you go to a cloud based approach, which I think, you know, we recommend law firms go to the cloud faster, as fast as they possibly can. Then I think you can open your workforce up to me. You know, you can manage it.

Brian Kennel: You can open your workforce up, you know, to almost, you know, if you're a national law firm. There's no reason you can't have a really, really smart person in Seattle working for, you know, a firm that's in LA. I mean, there's no reason to have those boundaries that space and, you know, us having to come to the same [00:15:00] place every day, create, you can overcome a lot of that.

Brian Kennel: Again, all this is just a part of your mix. Sure. You're going to want a core group. If, if, if it's necessary for you to collaborate in those ways, you're going to want a core group, come to the same place every day at the same time and sort of collaborate in a traditional way. Finding that right mix of, you know, sort of dedicated support onsite, sort of infrastructure type stuff, and then just remote workers that, you know, or lawyers or staff or whatever, you know, remote, remote resources that you can tap into and scale with.

Jan Roos: And I would imagine that you kind of get some objections to this when you bring it up initially, Brian. I mean, There's a lot of people, and obviously, you know, we're usually coming at this from the sales side. So, you know, what do you say to the person who said, Hey, look, you know, we've got this five or 10 year lease with this, you know, downtown office.

Jan Roos: It's overlooking the city, you know, why is everyone doing this? And we are in what kind of, you know, what's the reality of when people make this switch.

Brian Kennel: Well, I mean, think of, just think of a real practical sort of an example. Let's say you have a, what's typically known [00:16:00] in a lot of circles in sort of legal parlances.

Brian Kennel: Let's say you have an income partner, real good technician, real strong lawyer, but doesn't really supervise anybody and doesn't, doesn't really have any clients or anything, but they do this certain thing in this services that you provide. There's a really, really important, It's important. They do lots of it.

Brian Kennel: So there's no reason. And let's assume that person lives an hour or two hours from the office. There's no reason to eat up, you know, one to four hours of that person's schedule every day in a car. Okay. It makes absolutely no sense. And so by allowing remote work, you know, remote work and concept in that situation, you know, you can manage your payroll costs because you can say, look, you know, you're kind of topped out on what we can do for you on salary in the position you're in.

Brian Kennel: But. What we can do for you is we can cut commuting costs down to next to nothing. And so, you know, you wind up getting real less than obvious benefits out of it. Plus the hours go up because, you know, they're not having to spend two to four hours a day in a car. It's just one [00:17:00] example, but you know, and you have to have it in the big objection to, you know, if you want to stay with remote working, the big objection to it is, well, you know, what, how do I know these people are working?

Brian Kennel: And I thought, well, in the legal space, it's real easy to know. They're working or not because everything's a deliverable, you know, they're either doing stuff or not. And then I usually counter with, well, so they come here and they're not motivated and they're not working and they disrupt two or three other people and then they're not motivated and they're not, you know, you just gotta have the, you have to have the right people, but you know, it is part of the overall strategy.

Brian Kennel: It is not the whole strategy, you know, it's just part of it.

Jan Roos: Right. So let's talk about triggering events a little bit, Brian. So what are typically the places that that people will come to, to looking for a firm like yours in order to get some help on their practice?

Brian Kennel: We work best when you're in one of two situations, you know, you have a problem, you need help solving it.

Brian Kennel: Okay. Then, you know, and those problems are generally business. So you come in and you say, you know, our associates are leaving and we [00:18:00] have a lot of and the morale's low. Really need an associate develop program. We need to do things to tie these people to the firm that go beyond just money. Cause you know, maybe we pay a market, maybe we don't, but you know, so they want maybe help with a problem like that, or our partner's compensation.

Brian Kennel: Our partners are unhappy. You know, we don't, they don't feel like compensation is fair. We're not making enough money. You go right down the list. You know, so when they've got an issue and they've decided that the issue is severe enough, and unfortunately, that's kind of how they look at it. It has to get really severe and then they come to the outside you know, then they'll come to us and then, you know, we can get laser beam focused on that.

Brian Kennel: Then we can help them fix that. The other part of it is if you've got somewhere, and this, this is really fun for us because we have several clients that have somewhere they want to go. They've got a vision and it's pretty clear and they know where they want to go. They just can't execute it. Okay. They can't.

Brian Kennel: They don't either have the time or it's not in their, in their makeup, or they don't have the in house resources to execute on whatever their [00:19:00] vision is. And so that's where we, you know, we have a saying here, you know, where you want to go, we'll get you there. We specialize in that. We figure out, you know, you know, you know, the way you can get where you are to where you need to be, where you want to be is what we really focus on.

Brian Kennel: So we enjoy that. That's

Jan Roos: all

Brian Kennel: I want.

Jan Roos: So that firm that's looking to kind of establish a new thing, we spoke a little bit about the market research, but how are you generally recommending these people go out and get new cases for the most part?

Brian Kennel: Well, it's different, you know, obviously, in every situation, it's really different, not necessarily in every situation, the fundamentals are there, the best practice there, it's just how you apply, I mean, things that solo law firm is going to do, or a very small law firm is going to do focused on consumers.

Brian Kennel: It's going to be different than say, you know, a larger law firm that's focused on sophisticated buyers with well entrenched buying processes in those companies. So the consumer side is actually, it's seemingly, it seems easier. It is and it isn't. I mean, on the consumer side, let's [00:20:00] say you're doing, you know, personal injury or.

Brian Kennel: Bankruptcy or something like that, you know, you're reaching out to individual people and certain channels, social media channels work well for those, you know, on the more sophisticated side of it, you know, it's easier in one sense, because you kind of know where all the buyers are to kind of concentrated in one place.

Brian Kennel: But unfortunately, I think in some ways there are walls around and penetrating those walls. Buy design in a lot of companies is very difficult. So it's a little bit more methodical on the sophisticated sort of buyer side. So the way we do it is we start out with sort of a strategic marketing plan.

Brian Kennel: That's kind of where you want to go, you know, and why you want to go there and why you think when you get there, you're going to have something to say, you know, you're going to, you're going to be able to find a value along somebody's buying stream. So. You know, we focus more on sort of the B school marketing, if you will, with the sophisticated buyers, because, you know, it's more focused on trying to work within a large institution with institutional buying [00:21:00] rule.

Brian Kennel: And so on the consumer side, you can use. A lot more, I know you in your book, you talk about AdWords and that's certainly an option and sort of the direct consumer outreach and some of the plaintiff, you know, firms all think that television, you know, you go to TV, you go to TV, you go to TV, TV's everything, you know, you just got to get like those other guys and there's a whole science to that.

Brian Kennel: And, but mainly what we do more than anything else, because we're not, we're, we're more of a firm. Again, think about what I said, we're more about helping you get where you want to go. So once we sort of get your strategy laid out, once we get, you know, the why and how and what you're going to do when you get there laid out.

Brian Kennel: We like to figure out, you know, at that point, okay, what's the approach. And then we associate other people. So we would bring in a digital marketing expert. If you don't have that in house, we would, you know, if you need graphics support, we help you with that. If you need, if you need, you know, content, if you need marketing help.

Brian Kennel: If you need better web development, it's all of that [00:22:00] sort of the way we approach it is just once you sort of, if you think of it, you know, we do the strategy and then we, and then we sit down and we help you figure out how to implement that. So it really depends on, and there's no silver bullet, it's not that easy.

Brian Kennel: Everybody's offering a different approach and everybody brings different value.

Jan Roos: Right. So a couple of things I want to drill down on a little bit there, Brian. So for one, it's you know, it's, we're kind of returning to this importance of focus over everything, you know, getting a direction in place and the rest, you know, there's a lot of resources out there and you guys definitely provide some, some big value and connect people with that.

Jan Roos: But once you have that direction in place, It's really a lot of that stuff is just available to put into place. And I can also say, you know, on our end for the firms that we've been working with, having that strong differentiation from the rest of the market is absolutely critical than the same age.

Jan Roos: Cause you know, if you're just one family law divorce attorney, that's, you know, next to 600 different ones that have, Oh, sometimes it's really tough to compete on anything but price, but you know, when you're the person. person based in Texas who works on complex, you [00:23:00] know, royalty rights coming from oil fields, and you're the only people in the area that can do that, then all of a sudden you have the ability where you can charge a better price, you can, you know, get this, those metrics for your profitability a lot up and, you know, it all really starts with that strategy thing.

Jan Roos: And it's one of those things that in our experience from the firms that we've been spoken to, it's, it's. Very, very hard to do that in the beginning because there's kind of this sense of, you know, we're going to take what we're going to get, but, you know, once you really drill down on that stuff, it's definitely super valuable.

Jan Roos: And yeah, and the sales stuff too is pretty interesting too, because, you know, in some ways it's a lot easier. The the rules around attorney advertising are a lot more clear than the rules around solicitation, which is traditionally how we sell. See a lot of people pursuing this stuff in a B2B fashion and, you know, rounds up in the law.

Jan Roos: So, you know, if I could ask a little bit more in terms of, you know, how are we, we, you know, block and tackle getting into these firms for the most part for, for those big business clients, where, you know, it seems to be kind of a mystical area where you have these, you know, the giant Paul Weiss's of the world and such, you just kind of have this crazy, you know, a hundred plus year reputation you know, white glove partners, all that [00:24:00] kind of stuff.

Jan Roos: How are you kind of recommending people get started or improving those processes to get those big business clients?

Brian Kennel: Again, this is a difficult conversation with firms sometimes because they may say, you know, look, we can do anything those guys can do. We can do better and cheaper. And so the first thing we start with is okay.

Brian Kennel: All right. So that's pretty bold statement can do it better and cheaper. Give me some examples of that. Give me some specific wins or some specific successes you've had in those areas. And, you know, let's kind of stack those up because I, a lot of times fall into that role. And sometimes they think, they kind of like ask me every once in a while, like, Hey, which team are you on?

Brian Kennel: You know? And I'm like, look, I'm trying to be the objective guy in the room. You're saying to me, you can do it better and cheaper than the guy that I'm using right now. And I'm just saying, prove it. You know, and so we really drill them into a process that makes them understand, you know, it's really sort of a block and tackle SWOT analysis, you know, what are our strengths, weaknesses, [00:25:00] opportunities, and threats, and we make them through a series of questions, and we ask them the same question two or three or four different ways, but we make them take an honest evaluation of really where they are, okay, and so to try to get them to understand that You know, it's the market sees you in a certain way.

Brian Kennel: And if you're not in a selling situation regularly, and most lawyers are not in selling situation ever. But the one thing about people who are in selling situations, say in a large company or just someone who's doing sales for a living over time, those people get a real good feel, whether they like it or not, they get a real good feel about how the market perceives their company in that market and what their capabilities are and where they fit in.

Brian Kennel: And most law firms by design are kind of these, these insulated organizations that really have no real business training. They don't really have a sales process and they take everything very personally. So, and you need your lawyer to have high self esteem. I'm not, I'm not saying that you want to crush their confidence [00:26:00] and send them out, but to an extent, you have to bring them around to, You know, an understanding of how the market really sees that.

Brian Kennel: And if you can do it better and you can do it cheaper, then I have to ask you fundamentally, why aren't doing it? Like, why, why aren't the clients here? You ought to be beating them off with a stick. You ought to have so many of them that we ought to be raising price. And usually. It means is that you may actually be able to do it better.

Brian Kennel: You actually may be able to do it cheaper, but now we have talked about how we communicate that. You know, you can't just go out there that it's not as effective to go out there and just say, I can do it better and cheaper, everyone says that. Okay. And it doesn't even have to be cheaper, you know, just has to be better.

Brian Kennel: And you have to make the case through your marketing efforts, whether that's a content marketing strategy, whether that's, whether that's speaking that it just involves effort to get out there into the conversation, gets yourself into the conversation. make yourself relevant any way you can, any way you have to.

Brian Kennel: And then I think once you become [00:27:00] relevant, then you'll start to make some gains.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It kind of boils down to that old saying, you know, you can't read the label on the bottle from the inside. And I think it's a really important transition that some of these firms have to make if they are serious about growth to really see treat their offering not as a product.

Jan Roos: Personal thing and more of a business. And then this is, this happens in, you know, businesses that are in law firms all the time, but, you know, an insurance agent wouldn't feel bad personally, if, if he didn't end up getting retained, it was just, you know, just how the service is positioned within the market, but I feel like there's a lot of personal stuff tied up and it kind of goes back to those old school.

Jan Roos: May the best lawyer win mentality. This has been around for a really long time. Time, but you know, I'm sure you've seen Brian, it's like, you know, when, when people can really get this dialed in and you know, operate within, you know, the objective reality of what the market is, you probably see the the gains taking off from there.

Brian Kennel: Yeah. Because you know, you're competing, it's kind of, again, referencing your, your book, you know, and I know you didn't put me on to talk about your book. But, but, you know, what you sort of talk about once, you know, this idea that once you're competent, once you're actually, you have a competent [00:28:00] marketing process, then you can, then only then can you really start to enter into the conversation about that, whether or not you're a right fit for a particular service.

Brian Kennel: If you come sort of to the game and we get this quite a bit when we're sitting down with people, some people are all ears and excited and they want to learn and they want to do it. And most people in that situation, you know, you give them a little bit of advice, you help them get organized, and then you get out of their way.

Brian Kennel: They're already motivated. They already know what they want to do, and they're going to do what it takes. But you'll get that other group of people who have already decided for the market, how the market's going to view them. Okay. And. Unfortunately, you know, that is typically not how the market views. So those are the ones that struggle.

Brian Kennel: And so you have to go through this process and it can be a little bit, you know, humbling to an extent. You have to go through this process of sort of putting yourself, you know, as you say, reading the label from the outside of the bottle, you've got to look at yourself critically and say, okay, if I can do all of these things that I say I can do, then, then, you know, is it just how I'm communicating that, you know, why is it that people don't, am I being [00:29:00] overshadowed?

Brian Kennel: You know, what is it about this? And if you have an open mind and. You're willing to try some things that you're not comfortable with. I think you can start to have, we, our experience is you've had success when you put yourself into uncomfortable positions, you know, we see that when you're willing

Jan Roos: to do that, you can start to progress.

Jan Roos: Absolutely. And that's sort of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for anyone who's thinking about growing their law firm. Now, Brian, I know you guys have a lot of content based on your site for helping a lot of these topics that we've talked about, whether it's compensation structures. Getting your costs down.

Jan Roos: Where's the best place to find you online?

Brian Kennel: Well, performlaw.com is the fastest way. And then, you know, of course we're on Facebook and LinkedIn and you can find us in those spots. Just search performlaw.com and, you know, we are, you know, completely committed to finding the right fit for the right client.

Brian Kennel: So again, performlaw.com and you can call us at 504 858 7428

Jan Roos: Fantastic. Brian, thanks again so much for providing this valuable insight. This has been a really wide ranging conversation, but you know, it's a really [00:30:00] complex topic and, you know, there's people that are good at different aspects of this, but in order to really level up, you have to have a handle on this from all these different aspects.

Jan Roos: So thanks again for so much for taking the time, Brian.

Brian Kennel: I appreciate it, Jan. And if there's anything anybody needs, just go to our website, lots of free resources out there and always happy to publish more and send us your call. All

Jan Roos: right. And I'd highly encourage anyone who is touching any way by this conversation to go out and look for that.

Jan Roos: So thanks again, guys, for tuning in to another episode of the case rule podcast, and we'll be with you next week.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Growth podcast for show notes, free resources and more head on over to casefuel.com slash podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.