How Law Firms Can Improve Efficiency

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 64: Why You Need SOPs to Scale with Owen McGab

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: This episode is brought to you by sweet process. If you're looking to grow your law practice, who's going to be taking care of what you're doing today? There's a reason that the fastest growing law firms that we've interviewed on this podcast All square by SOPs, and that's because that enables them to focus on new things without stuff falling apart.

Jan Roos: Once they leave the room, sweet process was designed from the ground up to help teams ranging from solos plus freelancers to enterprise scale law firms, create and manage the SOPs that allow your team to execute correctly every single time. And at the end of the day, That allows you the owner to work on your business, create new process, or even kick back and relax [00:01:00] every once in a while.

Jan Roos: And for a limited time, listeners of The Law Firm Growth podcast, we'll be able to upgrade to a 28 day free trial by going to sweet process. com slash law firm growth. Again, that's sweet process. com slash law firm growth. See what process can do for your firm by signing up today. Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Jan Roos: I'm your host is always Jan Roos. And I am here with a very exciting episode. So we have Owen McGabb, the CEO of sweet process on with us today. So thanks for coming on the show. Hey Jan. Thanks for having me on the show. All right, awesome. So you guys may have noticed that sweet process reads have started to come out at the beginning of the show.

Jan Roos: And the reason why we were really excited about sweet process, which you've probably heard from the read that came before this episode is because we are really big about process. But I wanted to bring Owen on to give some context because he has a lot of really interesting background on how he arrived at this stuff, and I think it's very important.

Jan Roos: Timely because I've been seeing a lot of news kind of in [00:02:00] the legal marketing, legal practice management sphere, especially in the small business space around stuff like outsourcing specifically to the Philippines, Latin America, that kind of thing. And Oh, and before you started sweet process, you were in a similar realm, weren't you?

Owen McGab: Oh, yeah. So before I started sweet process used to run a firm where I used to provide businesses here in the U S. With no back office support. So basically they would get to a point where, they're doing the same thing over and over again. And maybe hiring somebody here in the U S might be too expensive for them, but they wanted to get work done abroad at a fraction of the price.

Owen McGab: And, but in order to do that, you would have to come in and understand how the work is done so that you can take it over from them and deliver the same results or better than they were doing themselves just by having someone abroad. Specifically in the Philippines doing the work for them, but I'm sure we'll go into more details as we progress with the interview.

Jan Roos: Yeah, for sure. And then basically it was this thing too, because a lot of times, like, all right, people think, [00:03:00] so I've got this person I've gone from a solo attorney to, I have this super VA, so they're going to be ready to rock on day one and doing a good job as me just without any super grants, which we know both is not usually the case where it happens.

Jan Roos: So if it happens as magic yeah, seriously. Yeah, and basically that kind of ended up leading to the the process of you guys ended up coming up with, so you press, I also think the the way that you ended up finding your co founder was super interesting as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Owen McGab: Okay. So let me, I guess it's opportunity to give a much better backstory. So Sweet Process started in the fourth quarter of 2013, right? And I'll tell you how exactly I met my co founder, Jervis. But before that, like I was saying, I used to have this, firm in the Philippines that was providing people here in the U.

Owen McGab: S. with staff. And this actually blew up at a point when, I think, was it the four hour work week or whatever? Tim Ferriss, I think. And so everybody, read that book or just magically just think, Hey, I'll just go to, hire somebody abroad, India, Philippines or whatever. And they [00:04:00] would just jump in and start doing the work.

Owen McGab: But yeah, I saw opportunity there and say, let's provide the service that would do that of providing the staff to do the work. But in order for us to take over, I had to come in and help my clients on this. Now. Okay. Other tasks that you're doing, there's about 80 percent of the tasks that you do every day in order to deliver your solutions to your customers.

Owen McGab: It's about 80 percent of the tasks that are requiring that you guys do over and over again. So what are those tasks? And most of the time, they won't even have this task documented, like in terms of procedures, processes, and policies for how the task is done. So I would come in and, work with them to document how the work was.

Owen McGab: As a matter of fact, literally doc, have recordings, like video recordings of, walk us through how you do the work. Imagine that we were your customer, you're doing this for them, walk us through how the task is done. Then we'll record the videos of it and then take that into and document procedures, step by step procedures for how the work is done.

Owen McGab: And so the problem we had then was that, there were [00:05:00] no tools that actually made it. Easy to do. As a matter of fact, there were some enterprise level tools, but the problem is trying to get, my staff in the Philippines to use those tools was like, really hard because the tools itself were, to be honest, I thought was probably made more for the management level than for people on the ground.

Owen McGab: And then the other exit end of this spectrum was Cable to get a bunch of different tools that were not specifically built for business process management, right? And then you're trying to use Google Docs. Yeah, Excel here blah blah there and for you No, you have a cobbled nightmare of different tools and in back of my mind I was like dude, I'm gonna have to figure out a way to build this tool.

Owen McGab: While still running that company, that agency, I was invited to a podcast hosted by Andrew Warner. The podcast is called Mixergy. So it's a podcast for startups and entrepreneurs who have, got into a certain level in their business, come and talk about how they got to their success and stuff like that.

Owen McGab: So he has that public facing podcast where he does, those kinds of stories, but he also had a one that was not public [00:06:00] facing where you actually have to pay. As a member to get access to this, and this is where you brings on guests to talk about a specific topic, and they go into a deep dive off basically teaching the systems behind something specific and so invited me on there to talk about how I was helping my clients systematize their operations by documenting procedures, processes and policies.

Owen McGab: Like how exactly if I had a new client, would I have? My team took over the client's work and how are we documenting stuff right for them? And so that's what the whole purpose of the course I was invited to do Was about and lo and behold my co founder jervis my the cto and co founder of sweet process Was on that call listening to it and reached out to me and said dude He has this idea that he's trying to work on and he wants to get my feedback on stuff And so I said, okay, let's you know Being the open guy I am, I said, go ahead let's have this conversation.

Owen McGab: And and then lo and behold, turns out he's trying to build a tool similar to something that I really wanted to build for my [00:07:00] agency. And I was like, dude, instead of me sharing insight with you on how to do this, let's just go ahead and build this stuff together. And so that's how SweetProcess started.

Owen McGab: This was the fourth quarter of 2013, and it took us about That'd be 90 days or so after that conversation to even start writing any code. Cause I told him that I said, dude, instead of us spending time writing any piece of code on how the software should be, why don't we go out there and get real feedback from potential customers?

Owen McGab: Talk to them, figure out what exactly is this problem that they having with regards to employees not having all the things they need at their fingertips for, being able to know how work is done. Let's go and understand the root problem so that we can understand the problem and figure out the way.

Owen McGab: To create the software that is easy to use and solves a problem in the most intuitive ways, instead of just going and just going to build up something and then delivering that thing and find out that nobody actually wants it. Yeah. So that really helped her because I think I did over, [00:08:00] I even have some of the recordings of those calls, but like over 50 plus calls of just.

Owen McGab: talking to different people from different industries. And after each of those calls, we'd sit down and synthesize what exactly was he saying? The problem? Yes, he's saying he wants this feature, but why was he asking for this feature? And at the end of the day, was able to crystallize, certain things that, okay, this has to be the bedrock on which we build the software.

Owen McGab: These are the things that we need to make sure the software needs to be able to have. And then we went ahead, launched the software and The rest is history.

Jan Roos: I gotta say it's some of the best stories that you ever hear about. Softwares programs, services that people develop are coming from scratching your own itch.

Jan Roos: And it seems like it definitely fits the category on it. But what I also want to pick out that's super interesting is that. You came with your own experience from essentially being consulting on these process things from yourself and a lot of different businesses, but you also had a really great test bed to try these out with all the clients that you presumably still had from like the, the the VA stuff.

Owen McGab: [00:09:00] Yeah. And the good thing is that if I had just only depended on my own experience, probably would have gone in a different route. And so I'm glad that I listened to. Back then when, when we, when we're starting this, I was listening to a lot of, interviews on how to build software and how to, do stuff because it, that's essentially what I was trying to do at this point.

Owen McGab: And I think I don't know who exactly I heard this from was like, don't worry about, building a line of code, just minimum viable product. Just try to understand the root issue. And I had my own, experience, my own issue with this thing. But if I focused on that, I would have thought maybe I needed to focus on trying to get customers who were trying to outsource their work.

Owen McGab: And that would be what I would have gone into. But by having this situation where I talk to different people from different industries, regardless of whether they were my. Customer or my client, or even had me to outsource. It brought a whole different perspective. And I think at the end of the day, that was much better for us.

Jan Roos: All right. So zooming in and [00:10:00] basically to talk about our own experience too. It's very interesting. So it's we've got about 12, 13 people on our team right now here at Casefuel. And it's been really interesting over the last year, because, we were much smaller, probably.

Jan Roos: Two years ago, or probably a team of three or four, but having to scale, which is the goal of a lot of people that are on this podcast right now. It's been a process of trying to get things that I have been doing. Other people on the staff have been doing out and onto some third, some external source and how we've been dealing with it.

Jan Roos: Probably reflects a lot of the situations that the listeners of this show are probably going into. And I can definitely empathize with the situation where you have, some kind of cobbled together situation and you got half your processes are in Google docs and the other ones are at Google.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Let's talk about that more. What do you think are some of the common pain points? And I guess this could speak to your clients that back when you're running the outsourcing things or the situation that you guys are finding when people are reaching out to you to to use sweet process, like what kind of situations would you say are the pain points for people that need you guys?

Jan Roos: The most.

Owen McGab: So basically, it's two different perspectives. First of all, is [00:11:00] getting your current employees up to speed and being able to have the information right there when they need it so that there's no delay of, oh, how do I do this? I did this like four months ago. How do I do this again? We're all human beings and have A lot of things going on.

Owen McGab: So yes, you might have done it four months ago, but now you don't have the information right in front of you spending time trying to dig through emails and all through wherever you might have kept information trying to figure out how to do it. And then it's the other perspective of okay. We're growing rapidly.

Owen McGab: We're trying to hire people. And now maybe it's a thing where because the way situation is you have to hire remotely or whatever. And people can't come into the office or whatever. So how do you make sure that the employee that you're hiring hits the ground running gone are the days where they had the whole thing of you being able to.

Owen McGab: Come and look at someone's shoulder and say, Hey, how do I do this? Now you literally got to make sure that information is, yeah, information is right at the fingertips. So there's two different issues that bring people [00:12:00] into thinking about, okay, maybe there needs to be a central place where information is for both the current employees, as well as new employees.

Owen McGab: Now. Depending on where you're attacking the issue from, or where you're experiencing the pain from, it all boils down to, where do you start, right? And I keep telling people that, we don't want to make these things complicated. Let's figure out, okay, as a manager, or as the, in this case, talking to owners of law firms, I'm assuming, right?

Owen McGab: As the managing partner of the law firm, what is that one thing that your employees keep Asking you questions about over and over again. It's not a fact. It's probably been like the 20th time you've explained yourself on how the work is done. And the reason that they're asking you how it's done is not because they just want to ask, obviously, it's because the information is not clear.

Owen McGab: So why don't we focus on, investing some time so that we can so that you, in your situation as a managing partner, the law firm can have these instructions step by step of how the work needs to be [00:13:00] done. So that at least. They don't have to keep coming back to you. There is a starting point that they can refer to, right?

Owen McGab: And you're no longer being asked the question. Now, the next thing is I'm a busy partner of this law firm. My job is to be helping my clients litigate their cases or whatever your field is. When am I going to have the time to actually now build this document? Great question. People think that when you start a documented procedure, it has to be an encyclopedia.

Owen McGab: No, it doesn't have to be that detailed. Because if you take the mode of thinking of, okay, this has to be constant, continuous improvement, then you know that you can start from ground zero and you just keep on adding more blocks on it and keep improving. So where do you start? Identify that Task that people keep asking over and over again for instructions.

Owen McGab: Now, the next thing is just document the title of the procedure for that task and the title of each of the steps. And that's it. That's the starting point. I call that a minimum [00:14:00] viable procedure. Now you say, Oh it doesn't give us much instructions, right? But then there are people who Perhaps a manager or some person in charge of operations that already have an idea because you've talked to them about this.

Owen McGab: Remember, you keep talking to people about this task over and over again. So obviously, some people already have an idea of how this is right. So now you've documented in three process that minimum viable procedure, which has a title procedure and title of each of the steps. Now add that procedure to a team that has the employees, please.

Owen McGab: Perhaps your manager or someone in operations that you know have to an extent have some idea of how this task is done. And then you start saying, Hey, using three process, Hey, I've documented this outline for this procedure. What should go into each step. So now it goes from a thing where you as the managing partner of the law firm has to do.

Owen McGab: All the work to something where you've already created that outline of the procedure. So it's not a blank screen and everybody's looking at the blank screen, but you've given them something to start with. And then you've encouraged people in law firm who have an idea of how the [00:15:00] task is done to go in there and start putting in the details.

Owen McGab: Of each of the steps. Now, when they put in any details, how much detail goes into it? I say just put enough to get somebody started on that step. That's all. Because as people start using these procedures that you've created with your team to start doing work, whenever they come across something that is not clear, that becomes a trigger.

Owen McGab: That comes back to you or your manager that say, OK, we have this procedure where step number one, something is off. The person is doing the work in step number one is not clear. Now it becomes a trigger for you to go back into step number one and improve on just step number one so that it's up to par to what it needs to be right.

Owen McGab: And like I said, You give yourself the permission that is a continuous improvement thing. And so you build that minimum viable procedure. You've collaborated with your employees to put in the, that's the minimum details in each step. And then as they start doing the work now, when something comes in that is an issue, it brings, it gets fed back to you so that you [00:16:00] can improve that step or whatever step that needs to be improved upon.

Owen McGab: And all this is done easily with a tool like suite process.

Jan Roos: That's also really interesting to I see a lot of parallels in the philosophy that you guys use to develop the process and the process of the philosophy that one can use to develop processes within the platform. And the reason why a lot of this lean methodology stuff is popular in Silicon Valley is because of.

Jan Roos: It allows people to get started faster and it allows people to I think a big situation too, and what I really liked that you said about that Owen was like, I feel like a lot of people stop themselves from taking the next step because they're already looking at the final product that is going to be the absolute, they want to go Step zero to step 10, when they only need to go from step zero to step one, and let you just highlight it.

Jan Roos: There is really important thing too. Now, a couple of things I wanted to to point out, and I actually think this is one of the most fascinating parts of the the platform and to take a quick step back we've been investigated that like ever since we ended up starting working together with Owen, looking at the [00:17:00] process ourselves and basically sweet process is truly built from the ground up and a lot of the situations that we've used in the past.

Jan Roos: Everything ranging from, Google docs spreadsheets with a bunch of videos tied to it, like that kind of stuff, having something that's really purpose built really helps facilitate the process. And one of the things I think is super unique is your guys concept of. Ownership on a process and the ability to iterate on the process itself, but also to follow it for a specific instance, the process that somebody is going to use to intake a new client versus the process to intake John Doe when he ends up coming in.

Owen McGab: So let me break that down because your listener, I know what you're saying, but your listener might not know what you're saying. So let's use an example of something that maybe most law firms would do. So you have. You document a process for how to onboard a new client, right? But that's actually the documentation of how the work is done.

Owen McGab: Now with our app, [00:18:00] you can collaborate together to document how the work is done. You also beautiful thing about it is you can also assign real work. To people to do based on what you've documented so that people can never say, Hey, I don't know how to on board the client. So let's say client James comes in.

Owen McGab: Now you literally go into the app and assign a task to your employee saying on board. Client James and that task is going to be based on the underlying process that you have documented. So while they're actually doing the real work of onboarding Client James and following the instructions, it's right there in front of them.

Owen McGab: They will never be able to say, I don't know how the work is done. So we married both the documenting of how the work is done with you actually doing real tasks and work. The reason why is because On one end, as people are collaborating together to document how the work is done, there's a lot of insight to be gathered.

Owen McGab: But also, we also believe that even when the work is being done, there's a lot of insight to be gathered. That's where you find out things that were not documented properly or some issue that was not [00:19:00] accounted for. Now, if you do the task management in a different app, you are now depending on your employee being so proactive to leave that other app and remember whatever they were doing and come back to this other app That's where the documentation is happening and say, hey there was something wrong that wasn't encountered it.

Owen McGab: But if both are in the same place, it's just a click of a button and the information goes back to the underline that the manager who created the document and say, Hey, something was not accounted for. I'm working on an actual task right here. It was not accounted for. And so that manager can get that information in real time, see that the manager, the employee is correct, update the underlying process of procedure.

Owen McGab: And in real time, that task they are working on is updated with the new steps or the improvement. All right.

Jan Roos: No, and that's fantastic too, because it also the, we always talk about processes as an asset, but the ability to have this directly in the software is really a game changer because it allows it to become a living asset, right?

Jan Roos: It's not just some, Dry, dusty old bones that somebody is going to, it's like a big guidebook. You blow the dust off of whenever [00:20:00] something comes in. It's this thing is getting interpreted by real world feedback, which is also, in, in the kind of process we're talking about, it makes it easier to get started because you can fix it as time goes on.

Jan Roos: But yeah, I thought that was really cool as far as the quality of the deliverables, which I'm sure a lot of the law firms listening to this are talking about if, there's a lot of people I don't know. Oh, and do you ever read that? I'm sure you read this book checklist manifesto. Atul Gawande.

Jan Roos: Yes, sir. But the kind of stuff that's used in emergency rooms and surgeries and stuff, it's there's, it allows you to really get to the point when you've invested the time into getting these processes dusted up and really tuned up, it might seem like a lot of work on the front end, but at the end.

Jan Roos: You have consistency of product, whether it's the best person on your team or the worst person on your team who, didn't sleep last night and maybe partied a little bit too late. If you can get it done by everyone, then you really have something to work with. So I wanted to go into a little bit more of this creation process.

Jan Roos: So when people are considering this. Let's ask the question first. So we've gone over what the processes that somebody should talk about from scratch, [00:21:00] but, do you guys have any sort of capabilities in place for adapting stuff for like maybe another platform that somebody might've been using, like a project manager?

Jan Roos: Great

Owen McGab: question. Yeah. So obviously we built it primarily with the intention that you would use it both for documenting and actually Carrying out tasks. But let's say for some reason you were able to convince your team that okay, let's use it for documenting, but they're so keen on using a different tool for carrying out the task.

Owen McGab: You can obviously mariate sweep process, or the technical word is integrate sweep process with another software, but you Via API, right? So if you have someone technical on your team you can do the API of our software integrated with the API of the other software. Or if you're not so technical, you can use a third party tool called Zapier or Zapier.

Owen McGab: Basically, Zapier is a software that basically all they do is marry different software together. And so as long as the other software is on their platform, then you'll be able to marry both software to get in, achieve what you wanna do for I, I'll give an example. So [00:22:00] let's say you. You use Salesforce, for instance, for your CRM, right?

Owen McGab: For sales, for getting new law firm clients. And let's say someone fills out a form on your website, and then when they fill out a form on your website that triggers something submitted to your a new lead submitted to your Salesforce, right? And now Salesforce is a CRM that you're using, right? It's customer relationship management software.

Owen McGab: And now when that happens, let's say you've designed an actual sales process inside of sweet process of what your person who your company will handle sales, what they need to do so that sales follows a predictable process right of step by step what they need to do. So once the form is filled out on the website, it triggers a new lead in sales.

Owen McGab: In Salesforce, if you have an integration with SweetProcess where you have integrated Salesforce with SweetProcess, that can now lead to a task in SweetProcess that your employee is following a task to carry out the sales process to close that new lead. And as the person is carrying out those steps in [00:23:00] SweetProcess, checking all the steps in the task that was generated, That information is also passed back into Salesforce.

Owen McGab: So I'm just giving an example of where you want to use a different software to carry out something, but you didn't want to use preprocess to do it. If you're a technical, you can do the API to API integration, or if you use a third party tool like Zapier, that works too.

Jan Roos: Okay, that's super cool.

Jan Roos: And then, it's also interesting to keep in mind too, because this whole kind of concept and one of the things I noticed that you said really earlier, and I've got some ideas for the reasoning behind this, but one of the things you noticed when you were going out to find the solutions in the market, a lot of these were enterprise, which weren't working, but a lot of them were designed for managers and not employees.

Jan Roos: I know that the concept of roles within the process is super important, but can you talk about a little bit, just in the general case, like who do you think within an organization should be responsible for writing process? Is it a management thing? Do you think it should be coming from the top down the ground up somewhere in between?

Jan Roos: Like, how do you see people using this within the platform?

Owen McGab: I'm sure my answer will surprise you. We believe everybody. [00:24:00] Should be able to write documentation on anything. You see a change, make a change. So your process is built so that we empower everybody. Now there's a caveat to it where we want managers of a department.

Owen McGab: Let's say we have a department, let's say I'm trying to, I'm struggling for a good

Jan Roos: collections billing,

Owen McGab: collections, right? So let's say we have a manager in the collections department. So in sweet process, you can create teams that represent your actual company. And so you'll see, you have a team in sweet process called collections.

Owen McGab: And within that team, you can. Just to meet somebody as a manager. And what it means as a manager in sweep process is that person can approve all changes to all the documents that are created in sweep process. But at the same time, everybody who's not a manager, as long as they have access to that document, because they're part of that team, they can see a change and make a change.

Owen McGab: So if they see a change that needs to be made because while they were making, working on a task, something, some brilliant insights. Inspired them. They can go into that underlying document and edit and make the changes. And if they do, because they're not the manager [00:25:00] in sweet process, they will have to seek approval from the manager.

Owen McGab: So why we do it this way is because we don't want any kind of bottleneck of people now relying on somebody to do something. No, you see the change, go make a change. And then knowing that there's that caveat that the manager has the ability to look to the changes that were suggested and if they like it, they can go ahead and approve it.

Jan Roos: Okay. Yeah. I think it's really important too, because. If you think about the situation, like obviously people have a range of where they're at and growing their law practice. And when they're listening to us, we've got people that are solos are listening to the show and maybe are just about to hire their first VA, and we have people that are managing attorneys that are maybe two or three levels between the people at the front line.

Jan Roos: But I think it's really important that like a lot of the times too, like I have situations, there's processes that are running case you'll, I haven't touched in six months because it's two levels below me. But those people are the ones who are closer to the, to what's happening every single day.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Take off like three things that didn't matter. Every single time they do it, they have the ability to suggest changes, which I think is brilliant.

Owen McGab: Obviously we want everybody to be proactive so that they [00:26:00] can go in there, see a change and make a change. But we also have the ability to say, if they do not want to be that proactive, but they want to be able to pass feedback, they can go into that underlying document and leave comments and mention the specific manager.

Owen McGab: I say, Hey, I think I need step two, this, whatever. And the manager can go and look at all the comments and all the feedback and then go make the changes. We make it as flexible for those proactive employees. I want to go in there and literally make the changes and seek approval. Or for those who want to be passive and share the information via feedback, and then it's up to the manager to make the change.

Owen McGab: We make that happen as well.

Jan Roos: Gotcha. Now I have a question that's. Outside of the scope of the software itself. But I think that you might have a good answer for it because you've seen so many of these deployments. How do you crack the challenge of employees or managers or somebody in the organization that is really stuck in their ways and they want to be a stick in the mud?

Jan Roos: How are you getting or how do you recommend people get compliance for the important people that need to be using a software like this within the organization?

Owen McGab: So who is stuck in [00:27:00] the mud? Is it the manager or is the underlying on lower level employee? I just want to get context.

Jan Roos: I guess it could be anyone.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Like, how would you do it for either? So it depends. If you're the manager of stop, stop paying

Owen McGab: them, that's why I try to get context. So if you think the managing part there, you have some lower level employee who is, stuck in the mud at this point, you might have to find a, an employee who's willing to, do things according to the progression that you want these to happen.

Owen McGab: You have to let go of that person. But now let's imagine this is a different scenario where it's actually maybe not the managing partner who's talking more, but some high level partner in a company who's talking more, and this is some person who's an operations person trying to make some changes, but this person who's talking the old ways is above him, I would say the best thing to do is, keep letting them do their old way, but then use a tool like sweep process and craft a new way of doing the same exact thing, and then make a case of.

Owen McGab: Their way versus new way. At the end of the day, results is what matters. If you can get better results crafting a new [00:28:00] way for doing things using three process, then the other person uses their old way and you can show the results of this old way versus using three process the new way. Results speak for themselves and then you can take the results that they got using their way and your results using a new way and take that a level above them and say, hey, managing partner, this is what we've found so far.

Owen McGab: I'm not saying that you should fire anybody, but I'm saying that, it's come to a certain point where we have to make a decision that's in the best life for the company. And based on what we're saying, this is a much more effective way to do things. The results are way much better. If we keep doing things the old way, then that says a lot more about us.

Owen McGab: Yeah. So what are we going to say about us when you say things like that, and you put things like that from a results standpoint, and, at this point, the managing partner will do what's right.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I was going to say too, cause I'm obviously a convert to the the church of process, but basically, there are some people that kind of can take some time to go around, but I know we mentioned the checklist manifesto earlier, but as far as I guess the philosophy and the strategy behind using this in business as a whole, like who are your favorite [00:29:00] resources could be authors could be podcasts could be, I dunno, management gurus who do you really look to your cell phone as far as the biggest thinkers in this field?

Owen McGab: Cool. In the process improvement field or just in just generally in business.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I'd say operations for the most part. Yeah. Process stuff for the most part.

Owen McGab: Okay. So it's hard for me to answer that question right now because most of the books on operations I've read them because I had to at a certain point.

Owen McGab: You have the E Myth, Michael Gerber, Bill Tussell, John Warrillow. I'm just talking about the most popular ones. And now you have. The goal

Jan Roos: by what's his name? Oh, gosh. I know that guy. He's got an Italian guy lemony snicketer. I don't know. So I'll let me, yeah, but the goal is

Owen McGab: actually very good.

Owen McGab: It's all about define, figuring out constraints in, in, in a process and, how constraints happen to affect the output and stuff like that. I might be wrong in my summary of the book, but it's a great, it's a great book to go. I think that's cool. And then there's another one called work the system by Sam Carpenter.

Owen McGab: Yeah. Walk the [00:30:00] systems good. So there are, a lot of books around the whole thing of management and, stuff. And the way I learn these days is really, if there's something specific in my business that I am trying to catch up on, when it comes to learning, I learn mostly from audio, basically audio books.

Owen McGab: That's my favorite way to learn. When it comes to books, I like to look for autobiographies of people who, entrepreneurs and stuff so I can learn from them. But when I'm trying to learn something specific, I look for a podcast that is dedicated to that specific thing. And I can get the most real up to date information on that very thing I'm trying to learn.

Owen McGab: Because by the time you start looking at a book, For that specific topic. Odds are is that the strategy and tips and whatever are owed. So the most UpToDate things I would find are actually podcasts, especially listening to the most UpToDate recent episodes on that very topic. So find a podcast that is dedicated to a specific topic that you're trying to solve.

Owen McGab: That's the best way I [00:31:00] find myself for learning and for from learning from other entrepreneurs. I look for, biographies that, you know. I can learn from, the stories behind how they build the business and stuff like that.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's really interesting too. And I'm embarrassed to say this, but our book, which I think I wrote that marketing world's changed a little bit since then.

Jan Roos: So I totally agree. If you want the hot stuff, make sure to subscribe to this podcast, but but yeah, but I'll also say this too. I had two reasons to do this. Cause I'm very interested in your list of books. So I think about it and I'm going to add some to mine. We'll have those in the show notes too, as well.

Jan Roos: But potentially for the middle manager, who's looking to sell the higher level manager, a lot of times I found that people are more receptive to third party recommendations. So if it's coming from Sam Carpenter, John Warlow, instead of from you, a lot of the times too, a book is a gift can go a long way for people that are trying to convince somebody who's a little stuck in their ways.

Jan Roos: So thanks for

Owen McGab: the book as a gift. Depends on the person being willing to read the book.

Jan Roos: That's true. .

Owen McGab: That's why I said if you want the [00:32:00] real results today, do you know, go ahead and build a process that you think it, that is better. Let them do this. Challenge them to, let's see who's gonna get a better result.

Owen McGab: You do your way, I do my new way. Let's see. And turn it to a fun thing, let's see who's gonna get a better results. And at the end of it, I'll see. We decide based on that. Yeah. And that's it.

Jan Roos: Yeah okay, this has been fantastic. And then just to sum these things up, I know I mentioned this at the beginning, but like when people are growing their businesses, like sometimes when you have process, it's not working, it can feel like that old circus act where like people are, you got the guy who's spinning the plates on top of the thing.

Jan Roos: And then. The one starts wobbling and you got to run over to that one and correct it. And if you don't have a stable process, that's what it ends up looking but the real goal for this, and this is how we've been using it on our business and how honestly the most successful people we've had on this podcast, all talk about process, this is the way that you're going to end up moving forward.

Jan Roos: There's no way. If you imagine what your law firm is going to look like at five times the revenue, More things will be happening. You cannot do them all [00:33:00] and, but your organization can. It's been super helpful to to hear what you had to say about that. Oh, and I really appreciate it.

Owen McGab: And the truth that most people don't realize that most times, if you have a problem in a business, it's actually a process problem, not necessarily a person.

Owen McGab: So if you come to that from that approach most of the problem I have are process problems. Then it's easy to, it's still going to do the work of, figuring out the process, improving it or whatever. So that is work, but it's easier to solve problems when if you focus on process, identifying the issue and solving it from a process standpoint.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And also to that point too you bring up something interesting, which is based on your background, especially it's if you have process that's written out to the point where somebody who doesn't speak English as their first language from the Philippines is able to do it to the same level as a employee that's in the office with you.

Jan Roos: That's a really strong process. Sometimes people are too quick to blame the person who's on, the person who's following the process. And so the process that they themselves wrote, so

Owen McGab: there's a lot of ways to look at that. It should be such that anybody you [00:34:00] literally pick up the street can follow it and get the same.

Owen McGab: Result. Obviously they have a specific experience. It then takes it to the next level. One thing I didn't mention because a lot of times we think that just having documentation of how work is done, it makes this whole thing become monotonous and people are not thinking anymore and it might be dry.

Owen McGab: But I wager to say having documentation for how work the different tasks that you do in your company, Has done, having documentation actually allows you to be more creative because instead of spending time trying to think about how the work is done, it's literally right there in front of you and you're working on it.

Owen McGab: Now you can start identifying some places. Maybe I don't need to do this step anymore. Maybe I can automate this. Maybe I can outsource this. Maybe I can even eliminate this task altogether. And just by thinking like that, I think that is creativity.

Jan Roos: Yeah, a hundred percent. There's a creativity in the process, but also if you have something that used to take you, if it took you all day to run payroll once a month, think about if you could have that handed off to somebody else or you can [00:35:00] do it more efficiently yourself, then that allows you to focus on higher level things in the business.

Jan Roos: And that's not just for you. It's, for your people as well, if they can, if they have something that's, like you get to the point where it's like driving your car home from work back when people used to do that kind of thing, but a lot of the times you can drive 35 miles and not even realize.

Jan Roos: I didn't pay attention to it, but that's where your processes could be like in your company. And then where would you mind go then? So it's a really exciting thing to think about.

Owen McGab: Yeah. And if you've taken the time to document how work is done and you literally know that, people follow this, it gets the results you want and people are following it and not getting the results they want.

Owen McGab: It's just down to two things. Either you need to make improvements to the underlying process, or maybe The document has been improved to the point where it actually works. And that's just an easy way to identify somebody who shouldn't be in the company anymore.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's, it comes down to due diligence, but like one of the things I really like about this whole kind of philosophy on is that it really is a philosophy of ownership.

Jan Roos: And I think people like the more stuff that you can take. [00:36:00] Is this is probably, if you want to start owning, if you want to own a large law firm, it's probably, best to start with owning what's in front of you today. So the more you can take responsibility for the, the better it can be.

Jan Roos: But yeah, this has been a great podcast. Oh and then for next steps we've got a pretty special offer for the guests. And again, this is one that you might've heard once or twice given because of the sponsorship, but what's the best way for people to take the next step.

Owen McGab: So we have something where we have with yarn where if you go to our website by default, you will get a 14 day trial, but we don't want you to do that because we actually want you to get an extended 28 day trial just by going to sweep process dot com forward slash law firm growth.

Owen McGab: Again, that's 3process. com forward slash love from growth and Jan will link to it. So basically it will basically let us know that, you came from Jan, listen to this podcast, but more importantly, you get an extended trial to try out 3process and we look forward to having you. Come join us.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And I totally recommend it to you guys. We're on the platform. And I also have to say there's also a fantastic onboarding sequence as well, if you're into that [00:37:00] kind of thing. So basically, yeah, sign up and, jump in on, I gotta say, if you haven't looked at something like this. This is absolutely critical to getting to the next level, as much as stuff like marketing, as much as stuff like hiring on the process is really, there's a reason why the people who are running seven figure firms that we interview here all mentioned it.

Jan Roos: And that's because it's important. So again, Oh, and thank you so much for taking the time and for everyone else. I'll see you guys next week, Tuesday at 8 AM on The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Owen McGab: Yeah. And

Jan Roos: thanks for having me.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth 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.