Secrets to Boosting Your Law Firm’s Profitability: Pricing Strategies, Effective Referrals, and Client Retention

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 66: Knowledge Bombs You Need to Know from Legal ‘Millionaire Maker’ Ken Hardison

Narrator: [00:00:00] 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. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host is always Jan Roos, and I am here today with an exciting guest in Ken Hardison of PELMA. So Ken is one of the OGs of the space. I've been hearing a lot of really great things from him over the years. I'm super excited to have him on.

Jan Roos: So thanks for coming on the show, Ken. Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure, man. All right. Awesome. One of the things I wanted to start with, so I was doing a little research on, just press prepping for the show. And I noticed that you guys have one of the ballsiest guarantees that I have ever seen in this space, which is you guys guarantee that people working with you are going to have a 25 percent increase in their business.[00:01:00]

Jan Roos: Yeah. And, you're not going to be putting a guarantee like that, if you can hit it every time. So I was just curious how do you guys, I'm sure that you guys have a process to, to getting those people as gaps. What kind of things are you looking at when somebody joins a program that you guys are able to close to make sure you're hitting those goals?

Ken Hardison: The first thing is we have a program where I got training modules that I go after the low hanging fruit to start with the things that I teach. But, not everybody's going to do it, but what I say is the 25 percent guarantee is if you grow 25 percent a year, you show me at least one, you've done at least one thing I've told you to do, then it's free for another year or until you get 25 percent growth.

Ken Hardison: Most people are getting a lot more, the deal is if you join it and they're not going to do anything, then I'd really just. And I got a 90 day money back guarantee the first 90 days. If you get it, you think this is just too much work for me. Did I just give you money back a hundred percent?

Ken Hardison: Here's my deal. This is what I always did with my law firm. Everything I've done is money back all my events, all my coaching [00:02:00] programs, my masterminds. And the deal is the reason I do it is simply because lawyers are so skeptical of it. It's, they are, and I'm one of them. So I can say it. We're trained to be skeptical.

Ken Hardison: That's what law school does. We're supposed to look for the worst. We think of the worst and that's our job to prevent people, making mistakes. And I've always thought about it. If your stuff's not good enough that you can't guarantee it, then you don't believe in it yourself.

Ken Hardison: My deal is. And this is a long play. It's not a short play. I'm not after the quick bunny. I want to build relationships and I want to help people. I'm not helping you. I don't want your money. I know it sounds corny, but the deal is when I had my law firm, I was the first. I had a PI practice in North Carolina and I was, I drove everybody crazy.

Ken Hardison: I put a guarantee on I said the first 30 days, if you're not completely satisfied, the way we treat you in your. Case, you can come get your file, no fees, no costs. And everybody thought I was crazy, but the deal is my I can, I know I went up 23 percent [00:03:00] with the same budget in signups and in seven years, I sold it.

Ken Hardison: I started at seven years before I sold out in 2010, I had two people bring their files back, but I got 23 percent increase, so you can figure out the numbers, but the deal is I was really big on client service and we papered everybody to death the first 30 days. Talk to them two or three times. And so they knew we were working on the case and it worked, it worked and then now I've seen some other firms doing it, I didn't trademark it or copyright or anything, because I'd be, but the lawyer said, we can't, no way we can do that.

Ken Hardison: But my deal is. When somebody choosing a lawyer, it's like me trying to get ready to have back surgery. I'd want to check it out. The only problem is once I go through that, I kick back out. But with a lawyer, you could get involved in it and they signed the contracts, retainer agreements or contingency.

Ken Hardison: We have. Contingency agreements for PI disability and workers comp, which is what I did the last 15, 20 years of practice. I did, I've done everything. I've done [00:04:00] domestic criminal and government contract and bankrupt. I've done everything. I was coming from a small town where you had to be a jack of all trades, but if you don't believe in what you do, I don't know.

Ken Hardison: To me, it's just seems I want them people to be okay that they're making, and it's I call it the risk reversal. I'm taking the risk. You're not, but the deal is if I believe in what I'm doing, and I know I'm good. From the south when it's not bragging, if you're telling the truth, so if we're good and we give good client service, then why not do it?

Ken Hardison: I know maybe it's a little arrogant, but I don't know. I just feel that

Jan Roos: way. Yeah. And yeah. I totally agree too. And the thing is, it's the risk reversal at the end of the day, it's you're not serving the client or the people that you could help if you're not doing what you can to overcome the blocks that are in their mind too.

Jan Roos: And what I find fascinating is I hadn't even thought about a risk reversal for personal injury because everyone thinks that the fact that it's on contingency is the risk reversal, but I find it fascinating that you took it one step further. The risk is, and I paid money and I'm not getting anything out of this.

Jan Roos: The [00:05:00] risk is. I took my case with the wrong attorney and he's just sitting on the file, which, is more common than a lot of people want to think, unfortunately. Yes. And that's next level stuff. And I think the numbers absolutely speak to the fact that you guys were able to do that.

Jan Roos: I think that's, first of all, off this with a super innovative tip off the junket. So thanks for that. But I wanted to dig in a little bit more into that whole concept of low hanging fruit. So I guess what are the common things that you guys see? And if somebody is walking around, they're not, hitting the full potential of law firm, what are the most common things that you see that people can close as far as gaps?

Ken Hardison: The number one. And this has been, this is world renowned. This is I see the most leakage, the most waste of money is poor intake people and it's, whether it's on the phone or internet, at least the lawyers are terrible. Listen, I started a whole company just because of this.

Ken Hardison: I started this company. I lost it last year. Lawyers, ghost calls, and we do ghost calls and we grade them and then send the owner the we grade them and tell them what they're [00:06:00] doing right and doing wrong. And then let them listen to it and use it for training purposes. But you would. I've seen law firm owners.

Ken Hardison: I used to do consulting work and I would go to their firm and they would always, I give them, something to fill out. They said, Oh, I signed up every case I want. And they might, but they're not answering all the calls. I can promise you. And probably I sit there and play five and no, only one firm in five years.

Ken Hardison: Got four out of five. Most of them was two or three out of five got the calls, and they were just losing cases left and right. And so what we try to do is get people to. Number one, we have an intake training with a lady that's they call her the phone sales doctor. She is better than me. And she does trainings every month through all our members.

Ken Hardison: And then like my masterminds, I give them some of the ghost calls free and they use those. So also I get them to start keeping track of every call and start thinking about it's not the conversions of how many leads versus how many [00:07:00] conversions of how many total leads. I want to know the conversion rate of the cases I really wanted.

Ken Hardison: Because really you should be hitting 95 percent and what I found most law firms around 75 to 85%. So here's the deal. If I'm getting a hundred leads a month and I'm signing up 25, if I could book that up to 10 percent to 35 and my average fee is 5, 000, do I need to tell you anything else? Yeah, do the math.

Ken Hardison: That's an extra over a half a billion dollars a year. And that's what I see. So that's probably. I know not probably it is the biggest gap. That's the biggest leakage I see in law firms. And the deal is the lawyers are blind to it. It's a blind spot. They think because they probably do set up about every case that they talked to the potential client, but how many calls never get to them?

Ken Hardison: How many calls it's like this new program I got out. I was talking to my, I do a Q and a every month. I was talking to the lawyer in Atlanta. He said, I had this guy come to him. It's called Inca. I N C a. And what it is, it's software and it's very cheap if somebody calls [00:08:00] your office and they missed somehow the call gets dropped or whatever, or you don't answer the call it's 24 seven.

Ken Hardison: It shoots them a text message and then starts to dialogue, and it keeps people from dialing another lawyer because that's what they're going to do. So things like that and Having apps and services after hours, and then really taking advantage of getting these Google reviews and getting on the local Google maps is another, I think, way to do it, but it takes a little longer, but that's one thing.

Ken Hardison: And then the third thing is really. I wrote a book called under promise over deliver, and I talk about the three phases of mark legal marketing before representation, which everybody does, and then really nurturing those clients to get them to where they will refer you clients. And probably 50 percent of lawyers do that.

Ken Hardison: But then after representation, only about 20 percent of lawyers, even they just Forget about these people. And these people, if you did a good job for them, they're [00:09:00] gold. Because why do you want to spend money getting somebody to hire you that don't know you, don't trust you, don't like you, trying to convince them to hire you when you've got people back here that if you were work them, they could be repeat customers.

Ken Hardison: Or they can refer you to somebody. And so I've developed a lot of the proprietary ways. I got 15 different ways, referral systems that I teach at Puma to get clients, old clients to refer you back cases. And some of them work quickly and some of them take up to a year. I bet some of this stuff takes time, right?

Ken Hardison: It's somehow you can see overnight. That's I call that the low hanging fruit. Stuff that's just sitting there that you're just not. It's just easy. Listen, if you can and I tell a lot of them to, sometimes you need to raise your price and they look at me like I'm crazy. So well, I'm afraid they won't hire me.

Ken Hardison: It's like I was at an event. I do these big events and the next one's in September the 29th through October 2nd, and that in new Orleans at the Ritz Carlton, I have four or 500 [00:10:00] lawyers show up. It's a marketing and management associate service big annual event. But I had this domestic lawyer stand up one day and she asked me at the end of the deal, she says here's my problem, Ken, I'm getting more business than I can handle.

Ken Hardison: She says, I'm just, I know how to get the cases. My problem is I just don't, I can't do no more. I, she says, and I just can't find good associates or whatever. I said how much do you charge an hour? She says. I said, we'll go to 600. She says I'll lose half my clients. I said, yep, absolutely.

Jan Roos: It's perfect. And you have to

Ken Hardison: work. Yeah. I said, you'll make the same amount of money and work half as much time. I said, there's a thing called for non contingency lawyers for fee retainers or hourly, it's called a price elasticity, right? And the deal is, and I teach this too, there's, it's like a graph.

Ken Hardison: You have to keep going up and then look at your conversions and say, your conversions might go down a little bit, but you get it to a sweet spot where you're making really good money. We're not having to work [00:11:00] so many cases because when it comes down to it, it's all about the bottom line, unless you just want to work yourself to death, and then the other thing is get associates. And

Jan Roos: yeah. How are you going to hire that without the pricing too? Cause it's and this is the thing, I think a lot of people and like a lot of this stuff, can we get a lot of copious notes of rabbit holes. I want to go back down, but like on the pricing note too.

Jan Roos: I think a lot of people don't realize this from like a price elasticity perspective. Cause sometimes I'll say something like in the estate planning space, there's some people who have crazy competition from stuff like legal zoom and they know, Oh Joey down the street ends up charging 1500.

Jan Roos: I charged 2, 500. It was like do you know who, you probably know more about what your competition's charging than the people that walk in your office. And I hate to break it to you. If somebody is going to be charging, it doesn't matter. Most. If you're charging a respectable minimum retainer, that's probably going to be the biggest purchase that somebody's going to make in the next couple of years outside of a home or a car.

Jan Roos: So whether it's 5, it doesn't really make a difference to most people at the end of the [00:12:00] day. And, we have a pretty real pain for almost any situation that you can find yourself in as a lawyer. It's just about, do you want to live in a practice where you have margin to reinvest into help?

Jan Roos: Or do you want to work yourself to the bone? Cause if it's not coming out of their pocket, it's going out of yours in one way or another, right?

Ken Hardison: Yeah. And the deal is, I remember, I, I said, I used to do everything this back in the eighties and early nineties, I did a lot of DWI work, DUI work in some States, and I was the most expensive guy in town, but I was really good.

Ken Hardison: Like the last 52 cases I did it for, I quit doing it at 98, I won 48 out of 52, so I had a knack for it, but I'd have them come in there and say Joe, down the road, we'll do it for 500. And I was charging like 3000. I said. 500 lawyer, go get a 500 lawyer. I said, you pay for what you get. Then I tell them the story about my dad when I was building a house and I tried to get the cheapest contractor and I ended up tearing my roof off.

Ken Hardison: And my dad said, I told you to get the most expensive one. He was the one I said, you've spent [00:13:00] more now. And then I ended up having to get the most expensive one to fix the guy that was cheaper, so cheap was not always cheaper. And I don't know. I just think that. Everybody's scared and I think that's the wrong way to be.

Ken Hardison: You never want to compete on price. Okay. If you've got to compete on price, then you're not going to somebody you'll lose in the end because there's always be somebody to undercut you. You can't, there'll always be somebody and we can look at stores like Kmart. They're pretty much gone now, JCPenney pretty much gone now.

Ken Hardison: These people, I used to have lawyers that would and everybody go crazy in my market, they would say, everybody charged a third. They were doing it for 20%, 25%. I said, don't worry about it. I said, and I did. And they ended up falling out because they cut each other out.

Ken Hardison: And the people that are looking for the deals. I don't want those people anywhere because they're always hard to deal with. They're always penny pitching me on everything. I, and it's like I know that, just the ones like that. I just don't want, they're just bad clients. I don't need it.[00:14:00]

Jan Roos: It's true too. Cause I see this as a very common, like I wouldn't go so far as to say naive, but it's the kind of business plan you'll see in a lot of lawyers in their first couple of years and not in their later couple of years. We're going to do really good work. I just came from a big firm.

Jan Roos: It's going to be as good as the big firm, but it's going to be at a reasonable price. And they don't realize that over time. It's like, this is the thing. And you just mentioned Kmart, right? It's it doesn't pay to be the second least expensive. And I'm sorry, you're not going to be cheaper than legal zoom anytime soon.

Jan Roos: So if you can take that as a given, like you can be, and this is the thing too, like a lot of I used to joke about this. It's no one goes in and says yeah, I want the cheapest plastic surgeon. I want them to give me the cheapest guy to do my nose. I want the cheapest parachute you can find.

Jan Roos: And you guys got to realize you're in this. Same category as that these are big issues. I wanted to go into something else as well. Cause this is something that I found really fascinating as far as this whole thing about referrals, I find that a lot of people are going at this in totally the wrong way.

Jan Roos: I can speak to this from experience when I ended up starting the agency or in the early days, like I was [00:15:00] going to be an eye. And I saw people just absolutely killing themselves. And you could see, because they had the scorecards for this, they're having 50 coffee meetings a week with, a massage guy and a interior decorator, all this stuff too.

Jan Roos: And people put in crazy hours with everyone, except for the person who knows how you run your service. So how do you recommend people focus their time more effectively and, get those referrals out of the people that actually know what they can do for them.

Ken Hardison: Yeah, I always tell people to look at.

Ken Hardison: Like for injury law who do these people go to before or right after? Who do they talk to before, right after they need your services? Like somebody gets a DWI, they don't see a bail bondsman. They might see a jailer. They might be talking to an insurance agent. Okay. Why would I want to get those people that are going to see the people that I'm seeing if if I'm doing a state planning, I might want to be talking to a tax attorney or CPA, those are the people that are going to have those people that got money that need planning.

Ken Hardison: If they can [00:16:00] hire, if it's domestic law, I might want to be talking to a lot of counselors because I've been through some marriage counseling. I'm a second marriage. And sometimes they tell you, Hey, y'all need to get divorced. They do. I had one tell me that.

Ken Hardison: So you never know. So I always try to look at that. Like I tell lawyers that I want dog bite cases. I said why don't you talk to the animal control officer? I'm sure they would know a lot about dog bite cases and get friends with them and help them. And the other thing is, you can't just go ask somebody for a referral.

Ken Hardison: You've got to go in. And knowing that go in there and see what you can do to help them. And then hopefully they'll help you back. And knowing that 50 percent of the time, you're not going to win. Okay. That you're going to not going to get the reciprocity. But that's one thing that's for other professionals, but I think your past clients were your best.

Ken Hardison: Many marketers, man, I've got some things I'm not going to reveal them all here today, people pay me a lot of money, but I'll just say this. [00:17:00] There's a lot of lost opportunities with past clients. And one thing is I'll say this, I will give this people newsletters. You want to stay in front of them.

Ken Hardison: I call it putting a fence around your herd because these lawyers think that If you use them and they're all important, you'll remember them five years from now. And that's just not the fact, that's not the truth. They might remember what your face looks like, but they won't remember your name. You might change locations.

Ken Hardison: They go there and they say he was here. I don't know where he's at. I can't remember the name of the firm. So that's, you're out of luck. So staying in front of them. But and then I've got this whole formula for a newsletter. It's got to be short on about a seventh grade level. That's pretty cool.

Ken Hardison: And it's got to be entertaining and no more than 25 percent about law. Have it about what's going on with you. I try to develop a relationship. Here's what I try to do. I try to, I want them to think of me as their trusted legal advisor, no matter what [00:18:00] they need. I will, if I can't help them, I'll find somebody.

Ken Hardison: Cause I don't want them to try to figure out what I do and don't do. And then some might be some stuff that where I could get a referral for the, if I'm a state lawyer and I say, listen, this you, Drill in their head. I got in every newsletter I ever did was we want you to think of us as your trusted legal advisor.

Ken Hardison: They actually have lawyers argue, but I don't want all these calls. I said, you don't want somebody to call you about a Miso case where you can refer out and get a third of a million dollar fee. Why wouldn't you? And then those people become to trust you more and they're not going to go with anybody else.

Ken Hardison: And then they're going to refer all their friends and family to you because they trust you because listen, people are going to refer and go to hire lawyers. They know and trust it's all about building relationships. When I was practicing law, I go in the grocery store, man, and people would come up to me and ask me about my daughter's wedding.

Ken Hardison: And cause I put everything about that and I wouldn't even know their names. But I acted like I did and I say, how are your family doing? And all that, we do that. We did a [00:19:00] lot of things for our past clients. Yeah. But you do build that relationship where they almost feel like they know you personally.

Ken Hardison: And that's going to be the people that they're going to, they're going to refer to lawyers that they feel that way with.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I got to say too, that's a golden tip. Like this is the thing, like a lot of the times too, we get on people just end up adding us to our mailing list and, shame on us for doing as much email marketing as we do outbound.

Jan Roos: This is only fair. But I get to see a lot of newsletters from people that do it. And it tends to fall into two camps, neither of which I think are particularly productive. It's you got the person who's doing like the advanced review of case law for whatever their district is that no one cares about.

Jan Roos: And the other one is, yeah, talking about, yeah, we got new carpets at the office and but it's like definitely as far as making it personal, but I guess that's a really important. Point two, getting the 25 percent legal. So they remember you are a lawyer. You're not just some sort of a, dancing clown trying to get in front of people's attention, but if you can strike the balance.

Jan Roos: And that's the thing too. It's I think there's a big opportunity too, because I would say, based on this conversation and other conversations that we've had being [00:20:00] extremely personable is in a lot of people's strong suits. It doesn't matter if it is in your specialty too.

Jan Roos: And I think that's also a super golden thing too. If you're talking about closing gaps and low hanging fruit, sometimes people in the course of what we're doing for marketing, people get super ticked if somebody has a different need, but it's okay do you want 25 percent of a case?

Jan Roos: You don't have to do any work on learn how to do that intake. It's it's going to be worth it at the end of the day. And then just one like a other thing to just tell it as far as actually getting to the point, cause you ended up selling your practices as well. Ken.

Ken Hardison: Yeah, I had to I built. I saw one in 2010 and then some lawyer at a conference said I just don't have the money you cause I did. I went out and bought a half a million dollars when I started my big practice that I sold in 2010. I had been with other firms, and I started my own in 2000.

Ken Hardison: And then 96, 96, 97 and some lawyers say I don't have that kind of money. And I said how much do you have to spend? He said, 6, 000 a month. I said, okay. [00:21:00] So I went and started a social security firm and spent 6, 000 a month. It sold it two years later for seven figures. And I had about 800 K active cases in it.

Ken Hardison: And I got those 800 cases with 100 and whatever 6 times 24 is, about 140, 000. And I got real lucky maybe you call it lucky, I don't know. But I figured out how to get social security cases for less than 200 apiece. And you ain't gonna believe what I did. I got invited to be on this lawyer who's another good marketer.

Ken Hardison: He's in my master minds and stuff down here in South Carolina. He does PI and workers comp, but he he did a show every noon at Thursday on NBC affiliate here. And it was like, I can't remember what's the name of asked the lawyers or whatever, but he was smart. He only, every week he would have, it would do two weeks every month on one on PI, one on worker's comp, where he would be there and his associates.[00:22:00]

Ken Hardison: But the other two weeks, he'd bring in like a criminal lawyers, two criminal lawyers, two social security lawyers, two family lawyers, two estate planning lawyers. And what happens is They're getting cases because of being on a TV show. And what do you think they're doing? They're sending him cases because he's helped them.

Ken Hardison: They don't charge them anything for it. He pays for everything. They get all the exposure. So who are they going to send a PI case to my man, Mr. McGuire. Yeah. And so I go on there and I got, I'm big on educational based market. And I had done this book, disability secrets revealed. And I was on there and I asked him before we started, I said, can I offer this free book?

Ken Hardison: And he said, I don't see no problem. And the producer said, Oh no, we can't do that. I said listen, he's paying the bill. I said, he says we can do it. We're going to do it. And so what I did, I took our phone number. We had an 800 number. I took that and put it on a sticky note behind the book. And at the end of it, I held the book up and said, if you want this free book, disability secrets revealed [00:23:00] how to double your chances of winning your disability case.

Ken Hardison: I said, call this number. And I read it out twice. It didn't have any graphics, anything. I get back to the office about 20 minutes after the show's over with. And my girls are saying, what in the hell we've got like 80 calls wanting this book. I said, really, we can't get anything done. We're just asking to call.

Ken Hardison: And I said, damn. So I started an infomercial and I had, I hired this. TV guy to interview me on the book. And I had the whole deal, the whole time I get you call this free recording and get your book. And then after I did that, I did a bunch of mailings and different things, a lot of multi step marketing.

Ken Hardison: And I was, it was, and I was getting these showtimes down here in Myrtle beach for 600 for a show, on Saturday or Sunday morning, which was the best times I learned that in a hard way and we were just killing it. And so I was getting cases. For nothing, your average fee is 3000 and you're paying 200 to get the case that's really [00:24:00] good return, 15 to one, that's pretty good.

Jan Roos: Yeah. That's fantastic too. And it sounds like, there's a lot of also things like, okay. I don't know if you realize this, but the density of value in the statements that you're making, it's making it, it's fantastic. And I love it, but it's tough for me to pick what which which stuff to take next, which is fantastic.

Jan Roos: But so you've got this guy who's made himself not to make too much of it, but like an Oprah kind of position he's gotten you on and you've figured out a way to get the, I guess what some people would call the lead magnet strategy. And then what year what year around, are we talking for this?

Ken Hardison: That happened in 2000. 13. Cause I sold it. Yeah. Mid 2013. Cause I sold that firm in mid 2015 to 15. Yeah. I had done one back at my old law firm in Raleigh on workers comp, and we would not get a lot of calls to be honest with you. We would get maybe 10 or 12 calls and down in Raleigh market. It was a lot more of a cost of 2000 back then, which probably costs four or 5, 000, but they [00:25:00] were really good cases.

Ken Hardison: What we found out was The people that watch this stuff, they had really good cases because it's like 80 percent of the cases that we signed up off of that show were surgical cases. Six figure cases, which workers and which meant anywhere from, average fee of around 30, 000. So it was still worth it.

Ken Hardison: If we only signed up three cases, we spent 4, And get three cases and make that, 90, 000 that's still good. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll see, but then, when I sold it out, they quit doing it. They quit doing a lot of things that I did, but they're still doing good, but they just not as aggressive as I was, cause I was growing like I put this way. I went, I started in 97. With me and two staffers and in 2002 I had 13 lawyers and 47 staff. Wow. And know we were having, we had so much growth that one year I just really kept my marketing budget in half and I said, [00:26:00] this is gonna be a infrastructure year.

Ken Hardison: We gotta get caught up. 'cause we were really didn't wanna do bad client service. And I could tell we were getting there, we were getting a couple, 'cause I had a client, I had a 800 client advocate hotline, and we were getting too many calls and I had a, I had my office managers. Her own private cell phone that, that nothing, but that call went to it.

Ken Hardison: She had to keep it with her eight, 24 seven. But we really, we push client service. So we had a client bill of rights. We had a client advocate hotline. We really pushed it. I never told him I could get them the most money. I never told him that I was tough and that I'd give him the biggest award.

Ken Hardison: I never held the checks up. I never did anything like that. I just told him, that They would be number one, everything we, I call it the theory of preeminence. I learned this from Jay Abraham. One of my, one of my two best mentors I've ever had. And he calls it the theory of preeminence.

Ken Hardison: Everything you do for the betterment of your client. And I used to tell people at the firm, I said, just, if you got a decision to make this, all you gotta do is say that statement. And that'll [00:27:00] tell you what you need to do. If it's for the betterment of the client, then we do it. If it's not, we don't do it.

Ken Hardison: That's very simple with it. Yeah. It's some of this stuff is just so simple. It's stupid but, you don't have to, it's this treat people the way you want to be treated. I used to have that deal, yeah. I, in fact, I stole this from Jeffrey Gittimer.

Ken Hardison: We had a deal. I had a client service manual at our firm and they had to take it for up before they could be totally hired. They had to take it and score 80 percent or better on it where they didn't get hired. And, but one of the deals was they had to put, I told her, I said, when you're talking to our clients.

Ken Hardison: Put grandma at the end of the sentence. And if you wouldn't tell you, talk to your grandmother like that, then don't talk to our clients like that. And it got them in the right, I had to change the mindset, I had to, make sure that they knew. I would fire people over not treat the clients right.

Ken Hardison: But then also I would fire clients if they were mean to our staff. And they love me because of that. I was tough, but I was also on their side. If a client was cursed at [00:28:00] them or something, and they'd tell me, I'd call the client and say, you got, I just, I don't allow them to do it to anybody.

Ken Hardison: They get fired if they curse. I don't allow it. We're professional and I'm not going to let you do it. So you got two choices. You can call up and apologize and not do it again. And we'll keep representing you. If you can't, you can get your file. When my staff figured, do I did that, man they walked through damn fire for me because they knew that I really cared about them.

Ken Hardison: That I won't let them be abused. I've always said, this is another one of my little say is your staff's going to treat your clients the way you treat your staff. I really believe that. Treat them right, treat them professional and I've never cursed. I've never hollered at a employee.

Ken Hardison: Now listen, don't mean I hadn't got on them, but I do it in private. I never embarrass them. I always say praise in public, criticize in private.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's I'm like a lot of like wisdom for this too. It's as far as it's an interesting position too, because I feel like every market's got the bulldog, [00:29:00] it's got that guy, but if you guys are coming from an angle of service too, and I gotta say too, like how many situations did you have where you made that kind of ultimate into a client who might've been acting out of pocket with one of your staff?

Jan Roos: Like how many times did they come around? I'm sure it happened, right?

Ken Hardison: 75 percent of the time they would call and apologize, but 25 percent of the time they couldn't get the file and that was okay too. That was all right with me.

Jan Roos: No, I ultimately, it's standing it's, standing around and like setting boundaries too.

Jan Roos: And I think a lot of times too, there's this weird paradox because like on some level, it's you see these things where there's I wouldn't say entitlement, but it's sometimes there's a situation where the attorney is. Things that I deserve this because of the X, Y, Z reason. But at the same time, there's on other factors and extreme fear to go against the client.

Jan Roos: And sometimes it's like the wrong thing. If you knew, I think it's worthwhile acting entitled in terms of setting your prices, in terms of being entitled on following up with somebody who's calling up on the phone and that guy doesn't, that person doesn't really owe you anything.

Jan Roos: So it's weird to see this happening, but I guess like when you get those things, I guess that's really where the magic happens.

Ken Hardison: Yeah, it [00:30:00] is. And you want you, listen, you never can build a great business law firm or anything, but with average employees, you got to have a players, a lot of a play.

Ken Hardison: You can't have all a players cause there's just not enough of them out there, but you want to hold on to them and you hold on to them. You got to let them know that you care, right? And you got to be there. Like I said, you got to be their coach. Your job is to try to help them get what they want. So they'll help you get what you want.

Ken Hardison: And I look at, I said, like at PILMA now, I sent out a survey. It's five quick questions every month to all my staff. And I want to know what their stress level is. And I want to know, what they're really happy about, or they're really unhappy about. So anything we can do is anything we need to change, and every week we have a meeting and I ask him, what do we need to stop doing, start doing, or keep doing, you'll be surprised once they know that you actually listened to them.

Ken Hardison: Then they buy in and then they become vested and they, I call them like stakeholders, [00:31:00] shareholders, although they're not, they don't own the stock, but when you can get an employee that feels like it's their business and they got to say so a little bit that you listen to them, especially with the younger crowd now means a lot to them.

Ken Hardison: I think it means a lot to everybody, but I think it's like very important for the 20 to 35 year olds. And and listen, I got a lot of good ideas because it's you're a general at the top of the hill, but really it's the guys down in the trenches. It really knows what the hell is going on.

Ken Hardison: It's the guys making the sausage. You, sometimes you don't know what's going on because you're too, you're,

Jan Roos: I don't know. Yeah. Especially as you get to the point where you scale up to, like you mentioned 47 staff, 13 attorneys, there's no way you can be a fly on the wall in every room like that at the end of the day.

Jan Roos: Maybe you're going to be the guy who's putting the patterns together, but you're not going to get to see what that data is unless you have, a good flow of getting people to that. And it was going to talk unless they know they're being listened to at the end of the day.

Ken Hardison: Yeah. I had a deal back then at the law firm. I had a suggestion box and it was pretty cool, man. So we had a, I had a suggestion box and I, and they put it in there [00:32:00] and I give them points. Whether we use it or not, if we use it, I give them so many points just to make an effort to give a suggestion. I said, I want suggestions on how to increase our profits or decrease our overhead.

Ken Hardison: And if we implement it, then they got just give me it, they got five to 10 points. But then if we implement it, they get anywhere from 20 to 100 points. And at the end of the year, I'd add it up in the top three, I would give them like one of them, I give a week's paid vacation at that at my place at the beach, second place, 1, 500 gift card, third place might get a 500 and we would do the awards to, make a big deal out of it.

Ken Hardison: And the deal was we made it. They saved me, I had one idea that saved me like over 18, 000 on my phone bill. I would have never thought of that. You know what I'm saying? And just little things like sometimes it was stupid stuff and we didn't do it, but I still give them the points, but somehow it was really good, to do.

Ken Hardison: And then we have our monthly meeting and we'd go through them all. We'd tell them which ones we were going to implement and which ones we won't. [00:33:00] Everybody felt like they were bested. I don't know, you got to. People like to feel like a part of something bigger, and they like to, and here's the big deal.

Ken Hardison: They want to know that you care and that you got to do some affirmation. People don't quit because they're not making enough money. Very seldom they quit because number one, they got an asshole for a supervisor. And number two, they don't feel appreciated. That's the two top reasons people leave jobs.

Ken Hardison: It's not, or the third one is they don't feel like they got any room for advancement. They've done studies. And fourth is money. It's not the number one thing. That ain't why people leave.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I guess they, especially times like this too, it's a lot harder to feel like you're a part of something when everyone's just, talking to their zoom screen all the time too.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But I know one of the things you mentioned on our pre call was a couple of resources you had, I think one of them was around code A little bit of a segue there, but if you will have been listening to this and, as far as being part of something bigger, I know Pelman is something that people might be interested in joining what's the best place to, take the next step in and get into your world.

Jan Roos: Can you [00:34:00]

Ken Hardison: just go to Pelman's P I L M a. org. And on our homepage, we've got a thing called a non member resources. And we've got it. I got two, three books in there that I've written myself. I've got some webinars that I've done. One of them is the seven levers of cashflow, which will blow your mind.

Ken Hardison: I really, I like that one. And all the lawyers liked it. It's ways to increase your cashflow without having to go borrow money from the bank. Very, it's something I learned from scaling up. I'm a scale it up certified and burn harnessed. Got it right. Bastion Rockefeller habits is going to taught me that another one of my mentors.

Ken Hardison: And it's just, we've got a whole lot. And then we got this thing coronavirus about how to manage remote employees and how to hold meetings, how to use this zoom to hold meetings, how to hold effective meet zoom meetings, just different things. Some of it, we wrote some of it. We pulled off from.

Ken Hardison: Different places, anything I thought would help the lawyers. I pulled it out and then we had some, [00:35:00] a bunch of zoom meetings that I did with different experts. We did that every week for four months and it's out there. It's still on, it's still on our resources, memory resources, a lot of good material really is.

Ken Hardison: And I say that cause not all of it's mine. If it's good. I'm going to use it. I don't care who, I don't care who did it. Yeah. And Yeah. And if you like that, we got a deal where, like I said, everything I do is a hundred percent guaranteed. So you can try us out for 90 days.

Ken Hardison: If it's not a good fit, you get your money back. If you go further and you don't grow 25%, then you get it another, you get it up to a year for free. I don't know what else I could do. It's leading a horse to water. I keep making, but the deal is, I know it works. I guess I'm bragging a little bit.

Ken Hardison: They nicknamed me the millionaire maker. I've met a lot of lawyers, millionaires, and I always tell them where's my share? And they said you got your shit. You got it

Jan Roos: up front.

Ken Hardison: Yeah.

Jan Roos: Hey, look, like you said earlier, they ain't bragging if it's true, right?

Ken Hardison: Yeah. But and I like, and I enjoy it.

Ken Hardison: I don't make the [00:36:00] money I used to make, but man, my stress level is like 98 percent less, it's stressful to run a big law firm. I'm just going to be honest with you. I loved it and I learned a lot of things, like I got. Lawyers now that take two months off, and go overseas with their family.

Ken Hardison: I've got guys I've took from six figures to seven figures from seven figures to eight figures. It's just amazing. Listen, they do the work. It's like I told him, I said, I told one girl, she'd been with me like 12 years and she's got 18 lawyers now and she's just killing it.

Ken Hardison: And I said, she said, I could have done this. I said, yeah, you would have done it. And I said, I just helped you do it a lot faster. Yeah, really, she would have got there, but I probably saved her hundreds of thousands, not millions. Plus I got her there about twice as fast as she would have gotten by

herself,

Ken Hardison: Because I made all those mistakes for, I can tell her.

Ken Hardison: And then the mastermind she's been in a mastermind since 12 years. And. She don't probably need to be a woman. She just likes to be in it. She likes, she learned from other people's mistakes. [00:37:00] Everybody's already done that or tried that. Love masterminds. I started, I was like the innovator in the legal industry.

Ken Hardison: Everybody says they're doing them now. I think ours are the best, but I'm biased. I know I am, but I've facilitated them for 15 years. And I've got five groups now. I've done a lot of mastermind meetings and it takes you got to have a special, it can't be about Ken Hardison. You got to let everybody engage.

Ken Hardison: So the ones that want to hold the floor, you got to quiet them down. And the ones that quiet, you got to pull stuff out of them. And then you're there at the end. If they don't get it, then you got to. Jump in and make sure they get the right answer, but you don't want it to be that you don't want it to be all about you.

Ken Hardison: You want everybody to be, it won't be like engage with each other. That makes a great mastermind when everybody's sharing and giving, it's not just a taking. It's a lot of yeah, I make all mine sign non disclosure agreements with liquidated damages. They cannot reveal, we do it from different markets so that they can speak freely.

Ken Hardison: [00:38:00] Cause a lot of my, to be honest with you, a lot of mine are personal injury. We got some that are not, but and that's a very competitive market, as that's more money spent on PPC PLR is any other law in the world.

Jan Roos: I was going to say, we used to do a lot of work in AdWords with the personal injury attorneys.

Jan Roos: And I was going to say, it's I always call them. They're the cowboys. Civil practice, and they got big appetites too. No, no one wants to be running a tidy six figure practice and personnel. First of all, that's for sure.

Ken Hardison: No, they're all wanting to, they're like that guy.

Ken Hardison: I used to have this guy was he's deceased now, bless his heart. But I did some real estate deal with him and he was very good at buying and selling real estate. And he said, I don't want it always. That's when everything that joins mine. Yeah.

Jan Roos: Oh, that's hilarious. All right. So Ken, and then one last thing too.

Jan Roos: I'd also recommend to you, we're brand new for one episode. I super appreciate you coming on, but if you want Ken every week, you also sign up for the grow your law firm podcast. You guys are closing on a year with that, right?

Ken Hardison: Yeah. I actually, I think we did our 65th podcast.

Ken Hardison: Episode last week. We [00:39:00] do whatever, every Friday. Yeah. We want you on our show too. We got it.

Jan Roos: Oh, fantastic. All right. Awesome guys. Yeah, I don't want to keep you too long. Can, I think we got the top of the hour coming up, but I'm super appreciate coming on the time. I think the guests are, our listeners are super appreciate it.

Jan Roos: And yeah, it's been great spending some time with you and I'm looking forward to catching up again soon.

Ken Hardison: All right. Thank you. It's been a pleasure, man. I appreciate it. All right. See you again.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Grove podcast. For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to casefuel.

Narrator: com slash podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.