So the first rule to transform your life is

mastering the mental and why don't you lead off with that,

and I'll chip in.

It's really going from kind of chaos to clarity,

right? My life was full of chaos, and my wife may argue

that there's still some chaos in my life. We know we just cleaned

out our garage, and so the garage was a lot of chaos, and

now it's some clarity in there, but about where things belong,

where things go. So that's what I've never done, that. It's been

our week doing. When you start your practice, it's really just

going putting out fires. You're running from one fire to the

next, and all day long, you're just putting out fires. And so

there's just all this chaos. There's no real role alignment.

There's no real clarity in roles. I was wearing all the

hats, and a lot of times I was like a tornado, right? There was

a problem in intake. I had to fix it. So then I'd go insert

myself into intake, and I'd make a mess out of it all. And that

put a lot of mental stress on me, right? I was constantly

stressed out. I had a lot of anxiety, and all that leads to

depression. And I had to really learn how to master the mental

side of it. I had to learn how to control first myself. I had

to realize how to look in the mirror and realize that I was

the problem, which is a hard thing to have to say, right? Is

that you are sometimes the problem. And a lot of times, if

you look in businesses, the owner is the problem. It starts

with you. It really is you. And that was the big first step, is

realizing, like, Hey, I don't have to be everyone to I don't

have to be everything to everyone. Let me really work on

my mental mindset. Get me in a good place, and then once I'm in

a good place, mentally, wow, what can we do with the

business? Where can the business go?

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good

evening. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing

for Law Firms podcast. Awesome guest today, Chris Keller, and

we've been getting a lot of good feedback for our 10 Golden Rules

Series. And what that is, we brainstorm a little bit in

advance, and Chris and I have come up with the 10 golden rules

to rise and transform your life and your practice. So that's a

pretty, pretty high standard Chris. But one thing I'll just

mention before we introduce Chris is we are at Arena 800

subscriptions on our YouTube channel, and I'd love to get

there's other things we can do with it. So I'm looking forward

to that. So if you like these webinars and podcasts and you're

watching on YouTube, or even if you want to go over there and

see the video, if you're watching the audio, please go to

YouTube to the 10 golden rules channel. We'd love a

subscription. Chris, welcome to the 10 golden rules podcast.

Thanks, Jay for having me so much. Man, I've

been a fan of yours from watching your Summit, and so to

be able to be on your podcast is amazing.

That's right. Chris was at tgr live now. He

checks all the boxes for a great 10 golden rules podcast guest.

He's an attorney. He's a speaker. He runs Eos, the

Entrepreneurial Operating System. He's in a mastermind.

He's in the fireproof mastermind. He has his own

podcast, so this one's going to be good, Chris, but welcome and

tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to where

you're at today.

Yeah, Jay, thanks. I appreciate it. Like most of

us, I went to law school. Didn't teach us a whole lot about the

business of law and frankly, I never wanted to be a law firm

owner. I wanted to be a prosecutor, and that's where I

started my career off. I started my career off in the State

Attorney's Office, and I was there for four years trying

cases, when one day I got a phone call saying, Hey, do you

want to come interview at a personal injury law firm? I was

like, didn't really apply. But needless to say, I went over,

took that interview and started on that path. I worked at a big

firm here in Palm Beach County for nearly eight years before I

decided, like a lot of us, to go out and be an entrepreneur and

hanging my own shingle. But when I did that, I didn't know what I

was doing. My dad had his own law firm, and I got to see him

run a firm for 40 plus years, but I still didn't know what

that meant. I didn't really have a plan. All I knew is I could

bring in business. And so I thought, just because I could

bring in cases, I have to be good at the rest of it. And we

Behold, the next year, by

the way, that that's called the E Myth. And

I'm sure you're familiar with the book E Myth, but

essentially, that's what many of us go through, is, Oh, I thought

I was good at marketing and digital marketing, and I started

a firm, and I realized I had to learn all about sales and

accounting and all these different things that I didn't

have to do in a job, job, and sounds like you had exactly the

same assumption. I can bring in cases, I can run a law firm,

right? If

we could, if I could bring in business, I gotta

be good at everything else, right? We started that, and a

those first few years, I was doing everything I was wearing,

all the hats. I was the director of marketing, the director of

finance, the director of HR, the front desk. I was taking the

trash out, stocking the fridge, cleaning the toilets, whatever

we had to do to get it done. My partners and I, we truly we

built our office from the ground up, and it was literally blood,

sweat and tears, like we remodeled the office ourselves,

and so we did everything. And. And it was great. We are

growing, and we grew the business year after year. And

were great. But at the same time, I knew that there was

more. And I knew there was more because I was working 80 hour

weeks or more. It was one of those things where I'd get to

the office by eight. I was there until dinner time to go home,

tuck the kids into bed and go back to the office. And I was

like, Man, this is no way to live life. I'm making some good

money, but everything else is failing. That's when I got into

business coaching, and that's where my life really took off

and changed. You got coached, yeah, got into business coaching

and because, again, I was wearing all the hats, I was

doing everything, and was barely practicing law, even though I

had a full case load, because throughout the day was all the

was running the business. And through business coaching, I

went through this power five exercise, which really focused

on your mental, emotional, spiritual, financial and

physical well being. And in that realized that while financially,

things had taken off for me in a big way since I'd left my firm,

the rest of the areas were really struggling. I put on a

lot of weight. I was drinking a lot to cope with all the stress,

and wasn't taking care of myself mentally, emotionally,

spiritually and physically. And going through the exercise,

that's when I realized I need to make some changes, because

through that exercise, I learned that if I wasn't right in all

those categories, and more importantly, affect my

relationships with my wife, with my kids, with my firm. And so I

had to make some changes, and that's when, really I started

adopting the 10 golden rules of how to rise and transform your

business. And that's really how our firm has grown from back

office, mostly at Palm Beach County office, to now we're, I

think, at eight states practicing. We have physical

locations in multiple states, team members in multiple states,

and we've adopted virtual assistants. We have team members

across the globe. Now

that's a great story. And last question before

we get into the 10 Rules, you obviously had a great business

coach who dealt with much more than business talk a little bit

about finding that great person. And how do you know when you've

got a coach who's going to change your life so well, so

positively,

well, you know, for me, I went to a summit, and

at the summit, it was one of those summits that is over the

top. It was a Mercedes Benz Superdome, number one man. There

Cole Kevin O'Leary, Arnold Schwarzenegger, spoke that year,

David Goggins, if you listen to David Goggins speaking, you

don't go run through a brick wall. I don't know what's going

on with you, but I was ready to run through a brick wall after

listen to Goggins. So all these guys were really kind of amping

me up, which was good, but really the most important part

of it was realizing, coming to the realization that, hey, I

needed something, right? I was only going to take us so far

based on my skill, based on my experience, based on my

knowledge, all that kind of thing. I could only take the

firm so far and so understand that I maybe I'd reach that

potential, right? Maybe I got as far as we were going to go,

maybe even through sheer luck at some points, right, just through

some lucky things, but I knew that if I really wanted to go

the organization, I was going to have to learn how to be a leader

and how to really grow a business. And for me, even

though that one was an over the top seminar, it was still that

kind of moment where I realized I need to make some changes, and

I needed to accept, accept coaching. And then in the

coaching came the real mindset shift. Really, what it took was

a mindset shift right from going to that of, I can do it all. I'm

the smartest person in the room. I know how to do it all. I can

do it all. To, hey, maybe I'm not the smartest person in the

room. Maybe I don't know how to do everything. Maybe there are

other people who who know more than I do and can help. And so

really going through that mindset shift really was the

real big change for me.

Yeah, what's the line when the student is ready,

the teacher appears? So maybe it was just timing. And for

fortunate alignment, we're going to cover a lot of these topics.

And Chris teased a little bit that the first five topics, he

called the power of five. We'll get into that. We call this the

10 golden rules to rise and transform your life and your

practice. And you have a new book coming out called Rise and

transform, right? Yeah,

it's going to be a year to change your life, and

it's really introducing this rise and transform framework.

So this is a little preview book targeted for

this. If you're listening to this in the future, you can hop

right over to Amazon and get that. Why don't you just run

again quickly through the five, and then we'll go one at a time

through the first five, and then we have five more to comprise 10

golden rules,

yeah. So the power five, and it's really kind of

the first five is really your mental, physical, emotional,

spiritual and financial. Well being, those are your Power

Five. And so it's all about mastering your the mental, your

physical power, emotional and spiritual, then obviously, and

hopefully financial as well.

Agree? Right? So the first rule to transform your

life is mastering the mental and why don't you lead off with

that, and I'll chip in.

It's really going from kind of chaos to clarity,

right? My life was full of chaos, and my wife may argue

that there's still some chaos in my life. We know we just cleaned

out our garage, and so the garage was a lot of chaos, and

now it's some clarity in there, but about where things belong,

where things go. So that's what we've done. I've never done

that. It's been our week doing when you start your practice,

it's really just going putting out fires. You're running from

one fire to the next, and all day long, you're just putting

out fires. And so there's just all this chaos. There's no real

role alignment. There's no real clarity in roles. I was wearing

all the hats, and a lot of times I was like a tornado, right?

There was a problem in intake. I had to fix it. So then I'd go

insert myself into intake, and I'd make a mess out of it all.

And that put a lot of middle stress on me, right? I was

constantly stressed out. I had a lot of anxiety, and all that

leads to depression. And I had to really learn how to master

the mental side of it. I had to learn how to control, first

myself. I had to realize how to look in the mirror and realize

that I was the problem, which is a hard thing to have to say,

right? Is that you are sometimes the problem. And a lot of times,

if you look in businesses, the owner is the problem. It starts

with you. It really is you. And that was the big first step, is

realizing like, Hey, I don't have to be everyone to I don't

have to be everything to everyone. Let me really work on

my mental mindset, get me in a good place, and then once I'm in

a good place, mentally, wow, what can we do with the

business? Where can the business go?

Yeah, that's great. And something you said

along while explaining this is that it's really the mindset,

and we did a lot of work in the seminar and event business. We

did those big Tony Robbins events with Tony Robbins and a

shark tank and a guy selling stock market course. And the one

thing I learned as we're doing all the marketing and working

with these experts, like Tony's people and T Harv Eker, on

creating the marketing and the messaging. Is most of this stuff

is hard work, right? You need the coaching, but you need the

mindset shift, but everybody wants the silver bullet, so we

always had to find the balance between selling silver bullet

and doing the work. And whether it's financial or mental mindset

stuff, you need budgets. You need a discipline, right? You

need if it's diet, it's we all know it's pretty simple, what

you eat and your exercise are going to be like two of the

three most important factors. And so your mindset about doing

those things right is the most important factor. So mastering

the mental regardless of what you want to accomplish, is

really significant,

and so true. So what I focus on is three things,

number one, being intentional, and number two, being

consistent, and then number three, being disciplined. Those

three things are really the the foundation of what you have to

do. You have to be intentional with your time, and you have to

be intentional with your behavior, what you're doing,

where you're putting your time, energy and effort into and you

have to be very consistent, showing up every single day.

It's hard to be consistent every day show up. And then two, being

disciplined enough to do it right? Cuz a lot of us are

motivated, like we're motivated, God, the morning for a run, but

then the next morning, it's a little cold outside, maybe it's

raining, you're like, ah, the motivation wanes. This one's

what's going to carry you through. So really focusing on

to be an intentional, consistent discipline is a big part of the

mental game

for me. Now we're getting into the next one, which

is physical power, and you're crushing it half triathlon. So

why don't you start on talk about physical power?

Well, honestly, for me, they it started with a

strong morning routine. So I'm up before 5am 5am is like

sleeping in for me these days. And I was not a morning person.

I was never a rise early person, but the science out there

supports by getting up early and starting your day with physical

movement, how powerful that is. And I adopted that. I started

going out for a run because I figured I didn't have to have

any special training. I didn't have to have any special

equipment. I said I put on a pair of shoes and go outside.

There wasn't a lot of excuses I could make for running. So for

that me, that's how I started. I've lost over 50 pounds in a

year. I ran a half marathon, a full marathon. I've done

multiple, four marathons now.

Congratulations, by the way, that's massive

accomplishment. Thank you. And

this and I was someone who couldn't make it to

my bell box without being winded. Jay like literally I to

go to my bell box. Was, like, it was a struggle. My first row was

point six, seven miles, and I think I walked half of it. It

was really, it was down to my cul de sac and back. So I didn't

go far. It's really getting up early. And started my day with

physical movement. I was able to check some boxes, and then that

started transforming my life. I started losing weight. So then

you start feeling a little bit better about yourself, a little

bit more. Yourself, you get a little bit more confidence. And

it was like a snowball effect for me. But it really starts

with that those early morning walks, those early morning runs,

early morning bike rides, where it's peaceful, it's quiet. The

day, my kids have it. I have three kids. My kids haven't come

downstairs yet. I'm not into the throws of the day. Clients are

not. Texting or calling my team members are not reaching out. So

it's that hour or two hours that I just get of being alone, where

I can go and process my thoughts, process my emotions,

work on that mental, emotional, spiritual side of things. And

the starting your day with movement is just it's

imperative.

Ironically, you know, when you see one YouTube,

three or four, the same. And I listened to Napoleon Hill

talking about the mornings this morning, and then I think Brian

Tracy talking about the Power Hour. But for me, it's also very

important to do it in the morning, like I need to exercise

in the morning. A lot of times it doesn't happen at night, if

for whatever reason. And I've been doing the 75 hard program,

if you're familiar with that. So it's two workouts a day. So if

you don't get one at in in the morning, you're in trouble. And

it's a 75 consecutive days, two workouts, one should be

outdoors, drink a gallon of water, follow a diet, no cheat

meals, no alcohol, read 10 pages of a non fiction book and take a

a profile picture. So I'll take a profile picture in a minute.

There's a lot of those

programs out there, but 75 hard is an amazing

one. It really, it has the potential to really transform

you.

Yeah, yeah. And I think Chris said, so long as you

pick something and get committed to it. So Chris is training for

marathons, triathlons, you can be darn sure that he's going to

put the time in on the weekends, because you can't just go out

and run 26 miles.

No, and that's been the coolest thing about

getting into endurance sports, right? Is that most people, at

least the majority of the people, are not going to show up

to the starting line of a marathon and be able to complete

a marathon without having trained. Maybe there's people

out there that can do it. They're the small percentage,

but most people are not going to survive a full marathon if they

haven't trained for it. You for it, and so having a plan, and

it's made me be get intentional with my time. It's made me be

consistent, showing up every day. It's made me get that

discipline in my life, which is carried over to all other

aspects of my life. So right now, I'm doing my first full

Ironman, which is November 16 in Arizona, and it's a 2.4 mile

swim, 112 mile bike ride followed by a full marathon. And

there's no way, even though I'm in great shape now, I spent two

years really building a space level of fitness. There's still

no way that I could show up at the starting line for that full

Ironman having not followed a training program and really

worked my way up to it. This is week one day, one of that

training program. So this morning started off at 5am with

a 45 minute bike ride. Then I jumped in the pool for an hour

training the pool. And then today was a straight training

day. So then I hit the gym full morning.

God bless Good luck, my friend. Alright, next

up is emotional, and I'll let you kick it off. Yeah. So

one of the biggest things I like to talk about with

emotional is a book that I read called that I read, same as

ever, by Morgan Housel, and it just was phenomenal. Books that

really talks about only focus on the things that are within your

control. There are so many things, and I'll speak about it

from marketing standpoint, because I know you're a

marketing company, and we all get so worried about some

competitor moved in our market, right? Some new competitor comes

in, and what's going to happen to our cases? Are we going to go

out of business? Oh my gosh, and we start worrying about all this

stuff. We have no control over what competitor comes in our

market and how much they're going to spend on TV or how many

billboards they put up. Like we had zero control over that. And

so I used to get so caught up on worrying about things that were

just outside of my control, which is an emotional journey,

right? I would ride the highs and I'd ride the lows and

personal injury, we get a really big settlement. We're like, Oh

man, we're on the top of the mountain. This is amazing. Life

so good. And then we go through the inevitable time of things

are maybe not so great, and now we're riding the lows. So I was

constantly riding those highs and lows. I was constantly on

that roller coaster. And once I read that book and realized,

like, hey, look, I gotta stop worrying things that somebody

control and just focus on the things I can control. What can I

control? I can show up, how I show up every day. That's what I

can control. I can control whether I show up, what energy I

bring, the excitement that I bring, that's what I control. I

can show the things about me. And so when I started focusing

on that, man, it's crazy. How much better more here I'm level

maybe, maybe there's a day where I go up, maybe go down a little

bit, but I never take that big dive, and I never take the big

high either. That book is phenomenal if you haven't read

it,

and managing the emotional is so important as a

leader. And I realized we used to start our weeks with our

status meeting, and invariably, we were dealing with all the

problems, and everybody would start out in a really crappy

mood every Monday. And so we changed it around. And one thing

we learned from EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating

System, the book traction, if you have not familiar,

definitely check it out. And we have entire webinars and

podcasts on that topic. If you're starting to hear about

EOS and traction, please make the time. But one thing every

EOS meeting starts out with is a segway. And the Segway is one

good thing from your personal life and one good thing from

your business life. And so we went around the room this

morning in our health 10 meeting, which is what you call

your your weekly. Leadership meeting, and everybody had some

funny or positive story from the weekend, and everybody had some

positive thing that they accomplished in work last week.

God bless. We started out with positivity, and I started out

positive. Well, everybody on my team did something great

business and personal, and it really keeps the energy high,

and that was very important for me as the leader, to stay

positive and not get into that negative space. Another thing

that's been super valuable for me is Dan Martel book. Buy back

your time. There's one line in there that saved me every single

day, and that's 80% done, is 100% awesome, and that allowed

me to empower my employees to do their thing, get it 80% right,

and realizing that was great, they got stuff done, and maybe I

could tweak it and give them some tips to get it to 100% but

really it's about letting go and empowering folks kept my

emotions high and kept me from always dwelling On the

perfectionism that often comes with leaders or visionaries, as

they're called, in Eos,

as you said, and as you brought up, we operate

under the EOS as well. I read traction fully bought in, and

just starting your means out with that segway, it's amazing

how much better meetings go. And so I make sure that all of our

means we go around and somebody has to add something positive,

because it really changes. That gets that mind shift, because

you don't know how people's day are going, right? They may come

to work and they had a really bad commute, and somebody made

them bad on the drive. They come into the office and they're

already not in a good place. And so just be able to have that

moment where you get the flip kind of script to get everybody

to think about what there's positive in the world, how

powerful that can be.

Fantastic. Next one is spiritual, and again, I'm

going to let you take the

lead. Yeah, look for me, it's church. Doesn't

have to necessarily be church for everyone, but for me, it's

church. And so I grew up in a church. Grew up going to church,

but like many people, fell away from church during college and

law school, when I was out of my house and not with my parents,

who were taking me to church and making sure I go into church

every Sunday. Other Things took priority, and then my wife and I

found our way back to church, but we were passive church

goers. I show up on Sunday, and they were up and down with that

as well. But really transforming my life, or part of that

transformation, was really leaning into that spiritual

side, and not just being a passive church goer, but being

an active participant in church, just something as basic as I go

to a church where there's a lot of music to begin and people are

raising their hands and really feeling the power of God. And I

wasn't that guy looked around the room like, what do these

people are doing? But now I leaned into that, if you come to

church, you'll see me. I'm fully engaged. I'm singing the songs.

My hands are raised. I'm making that connection, because I've

worked on that part of my life. I'm a part of a men's group

that's for C suite level people, where we get together and we

talked about faith and how important it is in running our

business and surrounding myself with those types of leaders, has

really grown that that spiritual side. I start every morning with

a prayer. First thing I do when I go to bed is I pray. Then I go

get a bottle of water. Have a bottle of water. I make my bed

so I can start the day with a check box. I will start my day

with something positive and checking a box and but having

that time to pray, meditate, sit in silence, really slow down

your mind, control your mind. It's amazing what I found in

church, the leaders that I've surrounded myself in church,

it's really just built me up so much and really supports me as I

continue to grow as a leader and continue to grow as a business

owner. Great story. I also came to synagogue,

in my case, a little bit late, but I guess I mostly because I

played competitive hockey. Growing up in Canada, there

wasn't a lot of time for Sunday school and going to the

synagogue, and my sisters were much more active in the

community. And then, sadly, my dad passed away eight years ago,

and I went to the ritual the minion, and said Kaddish every

day for the first 30 days. And I ran into the president of the

synagogue when I was there, and he's, oh, Jay, I've been meaning

to ask you, we need help with something on the board. We we

got hacked, and can you help me out with that? And of course,

I'm the digital marketing guy. I'm not the IT guy, but I knew a

guy, and I went and to the board meeting, and we got this thing

solved, and then we got new computers for everyone. Next

thing, I'm on the board for two years of myself, I got more

spiritual than I knew was coming, but certainly found all

kinds of peace and comfort and community in that spiritual

connection.

Yeah, one thing I also talk about when it talks

about the spiritual side of it is service. And so through my

church, we serve a lot, and we actually have a national survey

coming up. I believe it's July 12, but we do food packing

drives, and we do a lot of serve the community. It's amazing how,

when you put yourself out the community, you serve others, how

the Lord works in your life. And so that's been a big part of it

for us. It for us too, is through service, through our

church.

And of course, it's not the intention, but the

more folks you get to know, and they get to know your personal

injury lawyer, probably not bad for business either. Not

bad for business. Definitely not why I'm doing it,

but it happens to be one of the advantages of doing it as

well. Yeah, the Karma comes back to. Alright,

the fifth is the power of five is financial and yeah, why don't

you go ahead?

Yeah, for the first five years of doing

business, it was money in, money out. Whatever was in the bank

account is what we had to spend. And we made decisions based on

what was in our bank account. We had no real financial strategy

for running our business and how we're going to scale and grow.

And when you're living your life like that, it can be stressful,

especially when you're trying to scale and grow and when you're

trying to make money, making decisions based on finances, it

brings in a lot of stress. It brings in a lot of emotional and

mental stress to your life. And so what we did is we adopted the

Profit First mentality for the book, Profit First, and really

developed a financial strategy and how we going to fill these

different boxes, and how we've set it up. We have our owners

comp box, our tax box. We have a lot of credit that we do, some

operating cost on for, or some case, cost making sure that

we're have a plan to pay that debt off. We don't like to carry

debt box for taxes to be able to pay taxes and whatever else. If

we have some a marketing program or something we want to do, or

whatever we can have that kind of box to fill, put money in

there, and so knowing what we have to hit, what know what

those goals are, and how we're going to fill those boxes, it

really brings a lot of relief. It takes a lot of the guesswork

out, a lot of the stress out. We take the money and we transfer

it into the account, because Profit First says, if the

money's in your accounts, okay, the money's there to spend it.

Uh, forgetting that. Oh, by the way, I gotta pay myself. No. By

the way, I gotta cover taxes, no. By the way, I got all these

other things that we need to do. And so that was a big thing for

me in doing that, also understanding maybe I'm not the

best person to manage the firm's finances. And so we went out and

got a manager of finance and turned over the finances to

someone else. And I'll tell you that since doing that, I sleep

so much better at night. Used to I was checking the bank account

every single day, what's going on, what's going on, what's

going out, tracking all the deposits. Oh, and I was so

worried about it, was so stressed about it all the time.

And now

she came massively distracting from your

day job too, 100% because of checking

account. So now I asked her a simple question, on

track or off track? And so if she says on track, I know we're

good and we're in good shape, and she says, off track,

alright, we need to have a discussion to figure out, why

are we off track, and how can I help to get us on track? And so

that makes it a lot easier, takes a lot of the guesswork

out. Yeah, I also read Profit First, but we're

using a program called simple numbers. Greg Crabtree, and

actually, even better, our whole mastermind, I'm in a mastermind

with other agencies, and about 10 of us have opted into the

simple numbers sharing program, where we all share our numbers.

And it's particularly helpful because it shows you what

percentage you're spending on a min what percentage you're

spending on that important marketing box, and can make sure

nobody forgets that to leave it for the marketing box. Yes, the

masterminds that we're a part of is the same

thing where we have to share our numbers, and we kind of know

what our industry standard industry standard is for each of

those, our profit, our payroll, our operating expenses, our

marketing expenses. And so knowing those, what those

numbers are, those benchmarks are, and where you fall is so

important. For five years, I had no idea. I didn't even know what

the industry say averages were. And if I did know, I didn't know

where we stood on those and so now we've worked really hard to

make sure that we're growing and scaling in a healthy way. And

one good thing. So one thing I like to talk about is we've all

heard it, what gets measured gets improved, but what gets

measured and made public gets drastically improved. And so

being a part of a mastermind where we share our numbers is

crazy, because now people are seeing what your numbers are,

and you have to back, Whoa,

you're coming back in a quarter, and you gotta

open the kimono again. Yeah, no, it's very important. Great. So

we got through the first five the power of five. First one was

mastering the mental and Chris talked about how he went from

chaos to clarity. Second is physical power. And we both

said, Do doing something every morning? Will it? Will be a game

changer, and getting on some kind of program, training for a

marathon or 75 hard the emotional Chris recommended the

book, same as ever, by Morgan Housel, and that's on my new

reading list. Spiritual, getting involved in your church or your

synagogue or even some kind of group like the men's group, been

very powerful. And finally, financial Chris is following

Profit First. We're following simple numbers. But I think we

both one of the most beneficial thing is knowing what the

industry standards are and knowing really, just having

knowledge and not going at it blindly like sounds like we both

did early in our business careers. That's the first five,

the power of five. And now we're going to get into talking a

little bit about business and some of the business coaching

and teaching and speaking that we both do. And the first one is

AI for PI artificial intelligence for personal

injury. And Chris has a whole presentation on this. I of

course, have had all kinds of AI featured on this podcast and our

webinars. So, Chris, why don't you talk a little bit about AI

for PI

Yeah, AI is a game changer. It truly is. I think,

hopefully most people who listen to this have at least tried at

least one tool, such as chat GPT, which is just an amazing

tool. It's such a time. Saving tool. So hopefully everybody's

tried at least something, right? But there's so much out there

that is making our jobs so much easier and allowing us to be

more efficient. And one thing we talk about with our team members

is we want them to be able to maximize these tools in order to

make their jobs easier, more efficient, and that which allows

them to provide a higher level of customer service at the end

of the day, us as attorneys, we're the customer service

business. We're no different than than going to sitting at a

restaurant. We're providing a service, and we need to be able

to provide a high level of service. So now, with these AI

tools that are out there, it's amazing how you can use them in

every aspect of your business, from literally reception all the

way to settlement. There's just so many tools out there now. And

so for our firm, we truly want to be innovators in the space,

if we can. But at the very least, we want to be early

adopters. I don't want to be sitting back in 10 years saying,

Man, I really wish we would have tried chat. GPT, that would been

cool, huh? One thing I say about all law firms is that we tend to

be this industry. Legal industry tends to be 10 years behind.

Lots of industries were on TV and had billboards and all this

stuff. And lawyers were like, no, not us. We're not doing

that. When it comes to marketing, law was too classy to

do that. Internet marketing. We're behind the behind the ball

of that one too, where for Nah, we're not doing that. We That's

not who we are. And then there was a couple firms that went

into it, and then there were still a lot of firms that said,

Nope, not us. We're not billboard we're not those

attorneys. And now it seems like all those firms are in there 10

years later. They're saying, Man, we should have done this 10

years earlier. I don't want that to ever be us. So we've actually

created our we've developed our own voice, AI, and we have

grace. Who's our voice? Ai, she answers our phones. She's our

intake assistant. She will actually, she can actually take

a case from take a phone call and get it signed up for us. She

will send a contract via text message, walk them through how

to sign the contract and get the case signed up for us, which is

amazing. There's probably a lot of business owners or lawyers

who are listening to this podcast going, you're crazy.

You're allowing AI to sign up your cases. But yeah, we are,

and I truly think it's one of those things that I think it's

going to be here a lot sooner than later, but it's going to

transform our intake, our intake, our in our law firm.

It's just amazing, because grace, you know what? She shows

up every single day on time. She's never late, she's never

sick, she never takes a day off. She didn't get some fight with

her husband or her kids, or have a really bad commute to work, or

whatever else can go wrong. The quality of the call is the same

every single time we train her once, a teacher once, and no

more training.

She gets better and better, right? Because you

can continually retrain her.

Keeps learning, getting better and better. And

it's just amazing what we've been able to do with just that.

But we have so many tools that we use in our firm. We literally

have aI throughout our firm. I'm happy to talk about any of those

with you, but really being innovators, being those early

adopters, being out front the space. I really think that's

what changes things. That's what excites me. And really AI is

exciting. It's exciting to be out front, either way. Grace is

now calling clients to follow up on their care and treatment.

She's able to make outbound calls. And so we're really able

to transform the level of service that we provide, because

otherwise, you guys are in deep. Yeah, we're in deep. But I'll

tell you, it's been exciting what we're able to do

with AI, yeah, I just like people, maybe two

mindsets that Chris shared the first one, and that is, get in

and try it out, and don't be afraid. Yeah, Grace at the start

probably wasn't nearly as good as the very best intake person

on your team. But the reality is, she's much better than the

worst intake person and way better than the new intake

person who just started. And that's where AI can outperform

humans. Is you can train her to be better than the best person,

and then she's always way better than the new person, and that's

something you just can't account for in your training and

management of a company. The second mindset is to think of AI

in maybe three important areas of the firm. First up is

marketing, and there's a whole bunch of things we're doing on

the marketing side working with firms. The second in case

management, and a lot of the case management have built AI

into their tools, or there's demand tools that can do

demands, medical chronology, you want to test some of these

tools. And then the final piece, which I think is really

important, is the back end and the customer management piece,

case status and Hona both have a lot of AI built into their

product. And I'm begging, pleading, almost necessitating,

with our clients, get one of the back end customer management

tools, because that's significantly going to improve

customer happiness. It's significantly going to improve

the number of five star Google reviews the firm gets, which

helps my job on marketing, and it's significantly going to

improve referrals. And we all know referrals are the best

cases that you'll ever get. We went deep on AI, why don't we

hop into marketing mastery number seven, yeah,

you and I've talked a lot about marketing,

obviously, and we do a lot, but honestly, the thing that I like

the most is the Community Impact stuff. How can you be involved

your community? How can you make an impact to your community?

Community. One of our core values is community. And one

thing we focus on is, how do we make the lives of our clients,

our team and our community better? We want to inspire that

positive transformation. And so one thing we do, and it's coming

up, and I'll put a little plug out there, is August 2. We do

project backpack. This year. We're actually doing it our

office, hosting at our office. We're going to have bounce

houses and food trucks and some entertainment. I think that we

have the mascot from Roger Dean stadium coming to be live and

face paint all that kind of cool stuff. So we make a real big

impact. We do a QR code to have people reserve their backpacks,

we put we pack them full of all the school supplies. And so

we're able to make this big impact in our community, and

also obviously get our name out there in a big way. And so I

look at one thing that you and I talked about when it comes to

marketing, is marketing is time, money and impact, and that's how

I gage what are we going to get involved in? How much time does

it take for me or for my team, obviously, how much money does

it cost us? And then what's that potential impact? And so trying

to find causes that are personal to you. So for me, Project

backpack was something that's personal to me. My mom was a

retired school teacher, taught for 20 plus years.

Unfortunately, I lost my mom 11 years ago to multiple systems

atrophy, which is kind of a parking disease. And so this is

one of those things that I know that I grew up seeing my mom's a

school teacher. I rode to school every day I went to the school

she taught at. I saw what she did to give back to the

community, to provide her students with the best

experience. And it's personal for me, so I love it. So finding

those kind of marketing things that you can do that are

personal is so important. I

could talk about marketing for an hour, and we

don't have it today. I won't. But next up is the CEO model,

and running the firm like a CEO, as opposed to working on cases.

The

hardest part you talked about, you brought it up,

was Dan Martel book buyback of time, and so the first thing I

had to do was go through that 123, exercise. The ones are the

things that you're really good at and that you really enjoy.

The twos are the things that you're good at, but maybe you

don't necessarily enjoy. The threes are the things that you

really are not good at and you hate doing. And so when I did

that's it really was eye opening for me to understand and

appreciate why I was so miserable, why mentally,

emotionally, spiritually, not necessarily financially,

physically, was not doing so well is because I spent my day

doing threes. I'd come to work every single day, and I'd do

things that I wasn't good at, I wasn't and I didn't enjoy and

then I would wonder why I would go home miserable, like, why am

I so miserable today? Because I spent my day doing stuff that I

wasn't good at and I didn't enjoy doing, not taking the bank

account. Yeah, so really, implementing that buy back your

time model and then was so instrumental for me?

Yeah, I think the most insightful thing that I've

learned recently with the EOS model, and we've been running on

EOS for three or four years and full time for the last two

years, is what they call an accountability chart, and it's

similar to an organizational chart in most businesses, and

when we did the chart, I was in like four or five seats, and I'm

down to two or three seats now, meaning that I'm the head of

still two departments too many. And the most important thing

that as we've progressed through our EOS journey is getting the

leadership team really sitting in those leadership seats,

getting me out of those roles, freeing up my time and getting

me to do what I'm really good at. All right, we're getting

there number nine, own an operating system. Oh, so this is

where we jumped ahead, yeah, so having an operating system, like

an EOS or like a business operating system.

Yeah, same thing. Red traction fell in love with

having an operating system in place. We subscribe to my 90 so

we can get online. I have a program that tracks it, but the

biggest part of that was accountability. And so what was,

what we were also famous for, was there was some issue, some

problem, and say, Oh, I'll take care of it. I'll handle it. And

then a week goes by, I still haven't done it. Six weeks go

by, I still haven't got it done. Three months goes by, I haven't

done it. Six months goes by, I still haven't done it because

there was no system in place for how to track and make sure

people are doing it. Having a system in place where that

really drives accountability has changed everything for us. So we

have a leadership team. We meet weekly, we have our Cory

planning meetings, our annual planning meeting, and just

having that level of transparency, that level of

accountability, has really changed everything for me,

because we have those big 90 day rocks that we know we're working

on. We can see what those milestones are, and we know, are

we on track or off track to reach those milestones which are

ultimately going to lead us to those rocks, which are going to

be the things that really drive your business

forward? Yeah, before Eos, you hate meetings

after EOS. You really appreciate a well run meeting. And people

are always like, how can you meet every week? We have a

system. It's called nail 10. There's a fixed agenda. We look

at the scorecard. If there's an issue in the business, we add it

to the issues list. And it's such a relief to know, you know,

if there's something you need to talk about, you add it to the

issues list, and it's going to come up on the agenda with your

leadership team, getting an operating system. We both love

EOS. You could look at scaling up or several other systems, but

highly recommend getting an operating system, and it'll

change your life. It'll change your business 100% all right.

And last but certainly not least, masterminds and coaches.

Me, yeah, so important that whether you join

a masterminds group, whether you join a traditional coaching

program, or at the very least, have a mentor, have someone that

you can that's been there, that's done it, who you can

reach out to. And I know I've been lucky in my life to have a

lot of mentors along the way to reach out to, but then really

get into coaching. The biggest thing about coaching is having

that accountability partner. What I said in my business for

so long was that everybody was really just an echo chamber. If

I went and talked to someone, they just tell me what they

thought I wanted to hear, or what I wanted to know, whatever.

And so I was just getting the echo. When I got into coaching,

I would go to a coach and say, here's what I'm thinking. Well,

let's talk through that a little bit. Oh, wow. And then the

biggest part was being accountable. The coach would

say, alright, in 30 days, what are you going to commit to? What

are you going to do? And I had to make a commitment. And then

in 30 days, I knew that I was gonna have to show up and tell

her yes or no, did I do it or not? And I didn't want to let

her down. And I got whatever it was done that I need to get

done, which moved the business forward. And so really coaching,

having that, having that accountability partner, is so

important to grow your business. And then masterminds,

masterminds. I just finally got into a mastermind group. I've

been a business coach, but never a mastermind. Wow. The power of

masterminds is incredible. To be in a room with other law firm

owners or other business owners in whatever profession that you

may be in, and be able to walk through what's working in your

firm, or what's working in your business, maybe what's not

working in your business, seeing those other people's numbers.

It's incredible the impact it's having on my business, just by

surrounding myself with like minded law firm owners from

around the country who are in similar stages as I am and

experiencing some of the same challenges that I am and grow

and scale up my business.

Yeah, if you're thinking about inquiring into

some of these fire proof that Chris mentioned, Mike Morris is

the founder of fireproof, wrote a book called great book called

fireproof, pi attorney. Haven't read it. You gotta read the

our conference and other ones, pilma, we participate in pilma.

Kent Hardison run some great masterminds and Great Legal

Marketing with Ben and Brian. Awesome group as well. So

inquire about a mastermind. For me, the benefit of being in

masterminds, and in particular, right now I'm in a mastermind

with other agency owners who have a niche business, is

basically any problem you have. Somebody else in the group is

already having already solved. You're looking at software,

you're looking at hiring, you're trying to figure out sales.

Somebody in the group can give you a great answer to your

question. We do hot seats, where folks you get to bring a problem

each quarter when we have our quarterly meetings, and we do a

monthly on zoom as well. So basically, any problem you think

you might have, the group can solve it for you in about five

minutes. It really is awesome. And then you learn from

everybody else how they're getting ahead, and you can get

ahead. I thought of this a number of times while we were

doing this is Tony Robbins says success leaves clues, and so

many things we're talking about here today, getting coaching,

getting reading these great books, learning from great

success stories like Chris's success leaves clues, and you

can speed up the speed towards the achievement of your goals by

just finding someone who's gone through it in your before you

basically,

yeah, you and I were at a summit not too long

ago together, and I'd gone to that summit five, six years

earlier, and heard from all the speakers and didn't take it to

heart. Went back to my business and yeah, whatever. They don't

know what they're talking about. So then fast forward six years.

You and I are sitting in that same room, and I'm hearing the

speakers. I'm like, yep, made that mistake. Yep, did that Yep,

messed that up because I didn't listen the first time. And

hearing from other successful law firm owners who have grown

them to scale their business, they made a lot of mistakes

along the way. I repeated those same mistakes because I didn't

avail myself to trust in that process and learning from it.

And so they couldn't have said it better. Really, learning from

other people who've made the mistake have gone down some path

that didn't go where they thought it was going to go has

helped me a lot and saved me some time now that I'm at a

different level, much different level.

Now, Chris, this was awesome, and hopefully we

can contribute to helping folks transform their life and their

practice. The last question we always ask is the second last

question, what's a great referral for you?

Look, the best thing about being a personal

injury attorney is that anybody that's injured in any sort of

accident, it can be a referral. So it can be it can truly be

anyone they just have to be injured. But obviously we're

here and happy to help good The good thing is we have offices in

Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. So anywhere Florida, Georgia,

Tennessee, anyone that's involved in an accident, how you

think of us? And we'll take good care of them.

And the last question, where do they find

you?

So lots of different ways to find us. We

have, obviously, our law firm website is color swan.com I've

done a lot of on the personal side with the rise and transform

framework. So you can find me at call Chris, color.com I have a

blog, lots of videos, a lot of content there. The book will be

out soon, so either colors one.com or call Chris color.com

Chris, this was awesome. Thank you so much.

Hey. Appreciate it, Jay, thank you for your

time.