Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules. Jay Berkowitz,

good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Great guest today. Matt Darner from call box, is going to teach us all about cash flow collections. We'll get to Matt in two seconds. Just want to thank you for being here. Quick thing, if you listen to our shows, if you like them, you can help us a little bit by subscribing on YouTube. If you watch and listen on YouTube, or if you're on iTunes or Spotify. Subscribe to the show if you really like us. Give us a five star rating. It helps a lot. It helps us get great guests. Because a lot of the superstar folks, they're publicity people, are going to look at how many people subscribe to our show, whatnot. So take a minute do that favor for me. And without further ado. Matt donner, welcome to the 10 golden rules podcast.

Awesome. It's great to be here, Jay. I really appreciate the chance to come on.

So I teased a little bit. You're going to teach us all about cash flow and collections, but tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up with this great startup and got a great success story. So go ahead. Yeah,

it's a wild ride. I half jokingly say in any like classes I teach, in events I go to where we're going to talk about everyone's favorite topic, which is accounts receivable and debt collection and cash flow. You could just see, at least we get some laughs out of it, right? I tell people I used to have more hair before the start of this journey. And that is true, but yeah, you know, it's a wild ride. We got started, I guess going on 10 years ago. Now, I'll give you kind of the abridged version, but I'm you might think of me as kind of all things partnerships, kind of the face of the company. Go out and do great stuff, like this episode. I'm lucky to have a wonderful business partner and co founder, who's my best friend, who is also all things engineering. So we make a fun little duo on that. But we got started about 10 years ago, really, actually deep in sort of the collection space. And what I mean by that is we were trying to help small businesses of really any shape and size, before we found our passion and our niche in law firms, send past due collect things to collections, right? We were like a marketplace for finding a good collection agency, which is an even weirder place than I've we've ended up now, but always in the accounts receivable space, always trying to help small to midsize, mid sized businesses grow and get paid for their hard work. And just like any good business story, right? We kind of learned a lot throughout the ups and downs of of running a business. And it was a few years ago now that we really focused in on on serving law firms, helping them get paid for their work. And we found in some technology partners, like Clio and smoke ball, just awesome partnership on the tech side too. And everything just kind of clicked about two years ago. Actually, that way, everything just kind of lined up, and it was like, ah, we should have been here all along. So it's one of those kind of stories, but you got to stick around long enough to just learn the lessons, right? I know a lot of your listeners, as business owners running their firms, have all been through that too, right? We're all on that same train sometimes, right? Like this, the chaos of being business owners,

and you skipped right ahead to the company. But where are you from? Where'd you go to school? Tell us a little bit about Matt. Yeah, I'm

I like to say the next best thing to an army brat. And what I mean by that is, my dad was in the army, but got out of the army and started working for the federal government and so, but we kept up the moving just as if he was the military. So we just kind of traded at uniforms, I think a little bit. But yeah, I'm originally from the Midwest. I'm from Kansas City, but I've lived all over the place. I've lived in New England. I've lived in El Paso Texas, parts of Florida, at times. I'm now in Austin, Texas, but my background kind of curiously. I'm more of like a nerdy, creative type, but that found his. Way into sales and biz dev. I don't know how I was, like a very nervous, quiet kid in middle school, and then something, some switch flip somewhere, I got into theater, started doing sales right out of university. I went to University of Texas in Dallas, and then I just found my passion in solving problems. I mean, I know that sounds kind of cheesy, like it really kind of does, but I just love consulting, right? I love working with business owners and figuring out what's going on and how can we solve it. I've worked in kind of inventory tracking and asset tracking. I've done some engagement and social stuff as well, and bounced around a few industries, but I'm always most interested when I'm really working with people, like in the driver's seat at a business, and I don't know, I think it was inevitable I had to end up starting a company, because I just couldn't think I'm also wildly unemployable. I need to put my hands into every like, pocket, but like, bucket and pot. I gotta figure out how marketing works. Let's go do this. I'm not a marketer. I know you know exactly how you feel, yeah. But I couldn't help myself, and I made too many people mad. So I think I ended up on the Entrepreneur's Journey ultimately, kind of inevitably.

That's great. What are the top problems you'd like to solve problems? What are the top problems? Call box solves for folks?

live, yeah, and you do it exclusively for law firms we do

now. Yeah. So I'd say there's some historical clients that have been with us for a long time, or excellent clients, but in terms of who we cater to, who we go after, it's been a few years now that we exclusively like I like to say we only spend our calories trying to better this service for law firms. That's all we do now.

So clarity is a good thing, right?

The year, we focused in and kind of made the call, it's not to say we're a multi billion dollar company, but we're a lot more successful than we used to be, and things are a lot more comfortable than they used to be, but we were really struggling in the years before we focused in and our first we can talk more about the tech at some point, but we integrate with the practice management systems to see because that is the source of the truth of the billing and we really need that data to do what we do at scale. So as much as we're like in the services space, doing the calls and things like that, there's a huge technology component where what makes us so much more efficient and cost effective in that but one of the things we do is integrate with the practice management system. And the year we integrated with Clio, it was like mid year, I think we launched it in June. We tripled our revenue that year. It's like, Oh, I'll use colorful language maybe another time, but it's, oh, my goodness, I really wish we'd done that a few years further back, right, after all the stress and the roller coaster, and it just blew me away. And since then, we were like, well, that was the ultimate validation, right? We felt it we thought it through, we interviewed, we did a lot of research and talking to firms, but at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, right? You launched it six months in, and really not even a full year, right? Within six months of that, like the back half of that year, we tripled our revenue, and it was insane. So

there's riches in the niches, right? Is the expression, and there's so many things that when we started focusing only on law firms, like we'd done digital marketing for 15 years for every industry, and then the last five years, we only do law firms. And there's so many things that you don't realize that's going to come with that. First of all, our team got really good at it because that's all they do. They're not trying to figure out affiliate marketing, or they're not trying to figure out Amazon stores, like they're only trying to get law firms more traffic and more cases. It's pretty simple, right? And for me, like, my life got easier, like I knew which conferences I needed to be at, which book to write next and who to interview on my podcast and what monthly webinar we should do. So if you all haven't figured out your niche, if you're a law firm, you got to figure out a niche. You got to be really good at something, or maybe two things. If you have another partner, like we were talking about earlier, the more you can niche down, the better your life will be. Absolutely tell me a little bit more about the company and how you all service people and who's a good fit for the company?

Yeah, so we kind of come by this in an interesting way, right? Every, every startup founder wants to be like, kind of the sexy new startup AI is is exploding right now. We all know that the legal profession is kind of along for the ride too, right? There's been a lot of interesting things that have happened in that space already. I'm excited about that. I actually think there's an interesting role to play for that in the future. What we're working on, no, they're not exclusively. I think the thing that I've observed, and just to circle back very briefly on the niching down, I just want to echo what you said, too, is we were trying to boil the ocean, right? This is classic, can't say no to any dollar that was coming across our radar, because when you're so early in the journey, like, oh, we need money. We got to sell something. We have to be a business, right? And so, I mean, I, and this is in no way to say disparage these businesses. They're incredible professions, but we're talking I was chasing after plumbers, HVAC companies, marketing agencies, right? Content creators, startups and law firms and architects, and it was just like you said, you just I didn't know how to speak their language. And when we think now is kind of obvious in hindsight, but it's the pressure to just say yes to anything that's mildly interested in what you're doing is so great, especially we're a venture backed startup, right? We've taken some investor money at times, and we've been very blessed to have friendly investors. But that's not always the case. I've got some founders I know that are really under the gun right on these things, and they've been really supportive of our journey to figure it out. But yeah, we're chasing kind of our tails. And I always say, like to say we were a mile wide, but only an inch deep, right? We just couldn't speak to anyone with any sort of acknowledgement that we really understood what they were going through. And then, as buyers, like we don't we like to know something's built for us. Like it just makes sense once you really unpack it in terms of, like, how we come by it. Though, as exciting as technology is, we're always looking at efficiencies, but the real root of what we do is the kind of DNA here is to not lose the human touch, right? It's really important to us. And I think the reluctance for a lot of firm owners to engage in a solution of any kind, but particularly when we're talking about money, right, collecting of money or helping in the aid of cash flow is, don't ruin my relationships with my clients. My clients are my everything, like the relationship and so though we have the options in front of us to do way more automation, there's now some interesting stuff to play with on AI. We could have offshored this whole thing and made a lot more money in terms of margins, but we hire people trained in accounts receivable in the US, wherever possible. We actually we have some reps in Mexico as well, because we do some work with immigration firms. They want some Spanish speakers as well, which is great, but by and large, training accounts receivable have that on their resume, great with people that soft touch I jokingly say call boxes like collections with a lowercase c is kind of my little pun or my play on it, because our clients need to know that they can trust us with their best customers, and so what we try to do is mimic, basically, to put it plainly, what a firm should be doing if they had unlimited time and resources and hours in the day with the staff that they have execute a well thought out accounts receivable workflow that is run by someone who understands accounts receivable and can kind of thread the needle between we need to sometimes put pressure on our clients to pay their bills and make sure that we're being healthy as a business while really deeply respecting the relationship, especially those firms who work with consumers, individually, right? We work with all kinds of firms. I see family law, immigration, general type business practices, some real estate, little bit on the estate planning, if we talk probate and things like that, by and large, I'd say people who Bill hourly when don't get paid up front, or at least as a part of their practice, right as a part of their business, have some element of hourly billing. Certainly have accounts receivable. But that's not exclusive either. If you're a flat fee, but you break it up into installments, right? It's you still owed that money, or if credit card payment falls off, we just need to have a safety net for our business to make sure that we're following up on these past two bills with the right balance, right? And so that's who we try to serve. What's

your why? What gets. You up in the morning and excites you.

awesome. So you've got a great list. Oh yeah, top 10 list. And hey, look a guy from 10 golden rules. Gotta love a top 10 list, but Top 10 Strategies for cash flow and collections. So why don't you give us, like, three, three or four of the best ideas?

that simple, right? Write it down. Have a policy because and then follow here's another trick question we get all the time. Some people will be like, we want to pause.

Oh, yeah. Oh man, I bet, yeah. Okay. What

exactly does pause me like and you don't want to upset them? Yeah, we've got 30 day cancelation. And

right? The why there is so critical and so variable, right? Like, maybe they're having a cash flow crunch, right? That happens a lot, too. It's ironic when they were like, We want to pause, if that ever happens with us, which is rare, thankfully, because we're bringing in money, right? So our ROI, I'm grateful with this opportunity to be able to track our efforts back very clearly to a clear ROI, but yeah, sometimes you're doing amazing work, and then you, like, take a pause, like, what does that mean, right? And you really need to go back into your sales cap a little bit and kind of diagnose and peel back the onion, right? You got to figure out what, what's behind that, what's the pain we're really in, right? So absolutely, let's see. I mean, yeah, because I could throw out a couple other things. I mean, I think technology is sort of another big one a lot. Of course, overwhelmingly, firms are getting onto practice management solutions, great payment options, too. This kind of goes hand in hand. I have these as separate items in the list, leverage technology, right? So much time is wasted just by like hand effort handwriting an email or scheduling reminders and then going and writing those email reminders. There's great technology for that. That's something that our world, we do, but also, like a Clio a smoke ball, there are tons of great practice management solutions out there, especially depending on your practice area, leverage that technology and then plugged into that make sure you're making it as easy as possible for your clients to pay you. I think there's two pieces to unfold from that too, which are be very as clear as you possibly can. And I'm looking at you like hourly billing firms, that kind of family law. I see this happen a lot, but many others too. I don't know the costs are so variable, right? It depends, right? As we get into it, as much as you can, setting clear ranges of cost, estimates of cost, go more conservative. And I don't mean Sorry, I mean to say don't go lower on the number, go higher, right? You want to kind of under promise and over deliver on that one. Right? Rather than the reverse, but setting clear cost expectations, and then how much are you going to pay? When are you going to pay me, and how are you going to pay me? What's available to you as a client, and now with things like, of course, law pay has been around for a long time. Make it easy, credit card, absolutely now we could talk about this is, like the latest kind of revolution I feel like, in the legal and the payment space is financing right, a firm and law pay made a great partnership recently that I think is revolutionizing the ability to finance legal fees, right. And there are other vendors out there too, not to knock them, but this is kind of the big one, right. Law pay go and then after a firm and and went from we can finance handbags too. Wait, we can finance legal fees too. Actually, like, we can find out, pay later, anything. And so I think that's a huge thing to make sure you're up on for your firm too. How are we taking payment? And then are we availing ourselves of some interesting financing opportunities that shift the risk away from us? Because that's the other thing. Is AR, is essentially you being a bank, right? Right? This is all that counter to my interest? Like before, we want you to have AR so you'll find callback. No, I want you to get paid for your work and have a successful business, right? And so, yeah, you gotta think about ways to de risk it for yourself too.

All right, so give me one more from the top 10 tips,

yeah, so let's see, man, what am I pick? One? Got my list off to the side here. I'm pretty excited about this thing, but I think it's, I guess, for me, just knowing what I've seen and why we exist and how I got here is just make sure that you define that policy. We're leveraging technology kind of making that, that that process easier, like we talked about. Just make sure that someone owns this process inside of your firm, and that needs to not be the attorney, by the way, right? Like your opportunity cost is way too high if you're the one doing this follow up in no other industry does it work this way, right? Think about the last time you went to the doctor, right? And I have my beef with this a little bit too. But if I ask about the cost of something, when I'm talking to my doctor, they have done the ultimate job of this, right? Oh, not really. My thing. I have no idea what it costs. I'm not saying do that, because I am frustrated by that to some degree, but that's the billing department's problem, right? And then the billing department, you go talk to them, they are trained for this. They are wired for it. It is a specific skill set. And so I see a huge trap for firms, because we're all trying to do more with less. We are too. I get it, but if you've got your office manager or your paralegal or your other attorneys or just anyone who didn't say no, but kind of delegated to follow up on your collections, it's probably not working as well as it could be, because they're not doing all of the things in that policy that really need to be done, namely the phone calls. Like that's the big thing, but hire the right person for the job, just like you would choose a new partner or an office administrator. Accounts receivable is a very specific skill set, so it's not even necessarily to say, Go find call box, go, but if you do it yourself, just make sure you've got the right person wired for and they do exist, because that's who we hire. So they exist, and you don't need a tool like us, necessarily, but you do have to find the right person. That's a huge trap that you can fall in, all right?

So I didn't prep you with these. Normally, I prep people, but hopefully you listen to a couple of our shows. These are our one liners real quick. Give me some apps or techniques you use for personal productivity. Personal

productivity. I like doing time boxing a lot, so I'm a little old school. I definitely use my calendar for that. There are amazing apps for this, but blocking your time, I would say I'm still bad at it, but I'm fighting really hard that I'm easily distractible when it's like, Hey, new thing popped into my inbox. I have to block off time to work on my business just as much as I have to block time to work in my business. So time boxing, I think, is essential for any business owner.

Good one. Best business books.

Oh, well, you've got one back there. So traction, I think, is a really good one. This is a little bit easy to pull. Pull from, yeah. What is another one? Hacking growth is good. And then if you're into sales, or you're afraid of sales, actually, because a lot of people that kind of shy away from that, this has been my career. The Challenger sale is a really interesting one that may not make as much of the rounds, but just learning how to sell and do it well, without having to feel like the bad guy, right? I think that's important for a lot of people. The Challenger sale is a great one. I love it.

I just heard about that one, and I don't have it on my nice, massive stack of books to read. These are books read, okay, but I've got an equally big stack of books to read, blogs, podcasts, YouTubes, what do you subscribe to? And when it hits your feed, you immediately go to that one

interesting So personally, as a business owner, there's someone that I really like following. I I fell into the trap of tick tock to some degree, and initially I think that was like, not a good thing for me. And then I thankfully, the algorithm kind of worked itself out, and I get a lot of awesome like entrepreneurs talking on there. I really enjoy Alex hormozi stuff. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Love that. I think that guy's really inspiring. Just I'm trying to do more content, right? And I'm notoriously bad at this, and even though I love talking, that's not a problem. I guess I'm still somehow camera shy after all these years, a little bit. So I'm pushing myself to do that. I love I like his con. I love his content. And there's some other kind of spin offs I think that are very similar to him, that are very good as well. Who's your NFL team? Ooh, so I'm admittedly not the best fan in the world, and then I My passion is just running my business. But I come from Kansas City, and I know it'll feel overplayed now, but gotta go with the chiefs, I think, on that one and yeah, easy one there, right? Yeah. Well, it was harder before, but last

one's even easier. Where can people get in touch with you? Yeah,

so certainly on. LinkedIn, if you want to connect directly, I love chatting with business owners. I, despite being a sales guy, I'm not a high pressure guy at all. If you want to just talk shop about running business, or if you just want advice on cash flow, LinkedIn. Matt Darner, if you did want to reach out or hear any more about our content, call box.co, so C O, L, B, O, X, dot C, O, my email is just Matt at call box.co, so you can drop us, drop me a note there. But yeah, I love talking to business owners, particularly law firm owners. So if I can be a resource to the any of the listeners that's on the house. So I just like talking shop. It's fun for me too.

Well, it's not often we can bring someone to you on the podcast who can help you streamline cash flow and get some cash into your business. So Matt, thanks for your time today. It was awesome. It's

my pleasure. Jay, thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate everyone.

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