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.

Well, good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast, thank you for being here. I've got a great guest today. And I'm gonna hit it hard right out of the gate. Before I do that, I want to just ask you to give us a five star review, if you liked the content if you're in iTunes, or Spotify. And thank you so much for being here. And today. I've got John McCarthy and I've absolutely loved John's content. He's been on our webinar, we've done some presenting together. And he specializes in helping law firms do phenomenally well. And I like I said, I want it to come right out of the gate. By the way, this is Jay Berkowitz, 10 golden rules. We do internet marketing for law firms. And we'll learn more about John in a minute. But I love a case study that he talks about where law firm was struggling to make payroll. And with John's guidance, they turned everything around, made $2 million profit. The owner of the firm were, you know, didn't work for three months and was on holiday in New Zealand for three months. And it's just a great case study. So I want John to tell us right out of the gate, you know, what are three or four things that changed the trajectory and really makes a difference in managing your law firm.

You said profit the types of work that were coming in and marketing that works. So how did you actually, you know, drill down now, what did you do? Did you create p&l? And did you go through stuff with them weekly, monthly? How did you get the focus on profit to work?

Yeah, it's actually amazingly simple. I'm the client there, he, we've become great friends really good friends. I mean, the guy's worth that huge amount of money now and spends most of his life on holiday. It's the very first thing, it's not actually as difficult as people think. He had built a very good business, I'll call it a good business, because it was kind of growing and fairly big. But I wouldn't call it a good business because he's working crazy hours, and not able to take the money they wanted. But he hadn't built like a business, if that makes sense. He hadn't really looked in efficiencies. And he just went around the team, just finding out what wasn't working. He'd literally, it was so simple. He just walked all the way around and see what's going wrong. What's taking you too long, what was the inefficiencies? And he said, John, I really don't like you anymore. He had this huge box of list of things that weren't working, but he wasn't aware of. And he said, he's a complete, almost overwhelmed. What on earth do I do with this slot? And it was it was simple little things. It was I mean, some of the some of the things are so simple. You know, he was paying a couple $100 a month to rent plants. Well, the Whitman the team and said, Look, I'm paying hundreds of pounds under dollars a month for these plants. Does anyone mind if we don't have them? He said, No, we'll bring in our own plants. That's it a couple $100 dollars gone. And this is most people are probably doing this now to five or six years ago, just talking to the team, what's what's slowing you down, I'm constantly flicking between screens. But we've only got your spreadsheets and software and things. I've only got one screen, if we had two screens to play on, it'd be quicker. That's fairly standard now, but it wasn't five, six years ago. That's it, the phone gets two screens. And it was it sounds silly based off of the tiny little things like that, which is costing time. The big one, which is in the opposite end of the extreme, was their onboarding system was very complex for their new clients. And it was about 42 mouse clicks to onboard a client between different spreadsheets and software's and CRMs and various things. And they just said he didn't know this, because he's quite far removed. They said, Look, we want with all doing about 10 of these days, but 20 of us doing 10 a day, it's taken us a huge amount of time. So in this instance, he actually invested in software, and he did invest about 100,000 pounds. But that 100,000 pounds invested once that's set aside for five years ago, it saved him 40 hours a week, it literally saved him a whole employee salary, because he didn't get rid of the employee. He just took on more work. So honestly, there are efficiencies everywhere is the stuff we're spending money on like the plants, it could be software, it could be licenses, it could be, I don't know, marketing events, or conferences or stuff that is that isn't bringing money in. And a lot of it your team will know because this thing's annoying them every single day. We just don't think to ask doesn't need to be complicated.

That's great. And you know, the folks who listen to this podcast, we talk a lot about marketing that works. But what are some of the benchmarks you looked at? Or what are some of the functional things that you've found, and worked with him on to improve his marketing and find marketing that worked? Well, in

terms of the marketing, this is where I kind of do I step back a bit? I'm not a specialist like ujs? I don't get stuck into the specifics like you do. But they were doing a lot of online and a lot of Google and SEO essentially, a lot of what they did in one aspect of their business was Google Marketing. And again, they weren't measuring it. So he'd started to build a dashboard of right, how much are we spending? How many leads are we getting in? What's the conversion rate? What's the average value, the simple stuff, you're smiling because you do this all the time with your clients, but it wasn't being measured. And they work. They worked with a company not me a company just like yourself, and they refined it and refined it and refined it and he would send me a text of hey, it's notes like spend $1 get $3 back and then he got it from spend $1 and getting $10 back marketing is free when you really get to that level. But that's kind of one thing. And the other thing isn't Charlie recently working with him. I literally found a way even last year to double his business within the next 12 to 18 months. This Bellamy's business has grown from what it's 10x really, we've gone from about 200 to 300,000 to what about 3 million profit now? So like ridiculous growth in profit, but there's a massive gap. Where are they haven't even looked looking at who's the grade eight clients? What business services are they providing to them? And what else could they provide to them? There's lots of additional sales, you're like, he works with that their law firm locks, works with other big law firms. So they might work with the family department but not work with with property or not work with commercial, and they've never really sat down and did an analysis of you know, all the companies and all the departments per company. They are providing services. And also they're not providing service is just basic account management, we get really sucked into this must do more marketing, more marketing, more marketing, new customers, new customers. And often, there's so much day in our business already, that profit margins, the great eight lines that you want. And then just working really well with your existing clients, there's so much money left on the table. And I think when you work more closely with your clients, it becomes stickier. Because you come you kind of become the guy to go to or the company to go to. Now if I was to get you to do a little bit of marketing, for me, it's great. If you started doing four out of five strategies for me, all of a sudden, I'm not going to want Jay to go to Jay Z did an awesome job,

when I was smiling a minute ago is because my my friend, my coach, my mentor, Josh Nelson, and he says what gets attention? What gets measured gets attention and improve. Yeah, what gets measured? And you you said it exactly, because I was gonna say the same thing. How much are you spending? How many leads are you getting? How many are converting to clients? And if you need to, what are those clients worth? Now? What's the average cost per case? What's the average cost per client? The math is pretty simple. And then you just have to look at it on a regular basis. So at a minimum, you need that monthly scorecard meeting, maybe twice a month, maybe weekly. When you're starting out. Yeah, you hit all the high points. So now let's go back to the beginning. I love John's title. He's called the profit coach. And his company is summit business. And I'll let him tell us a little bit more. Oh, and then the other incredible thing I love his sort of military discipline comes from 30 years in the in the British Army. So tell us a little bit about your story and your company.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I'll I'll clarify the military better on the mislead there. So I'm 50 She's midfacial, nearly mid 50s banner scary now. But since a teenager, I wanted to be in the military. And I'm super competitive. And for me over here, that there's just too too unique regiments which are just below Special Forces as the parachute regiment in the Royal Marines. I liked Green Beret, rather than a purple beret. On the Euro marine Commandos, I've passed the assessment, I think at 18 for a commission. So as you pass all the physical, and then went on to pass the assessments for for to be an officer with the Royal Marines. And that was my dream, you know, I kind of wanted to go home and it was my life just opened up. Unfortunately, before I even got to the front gates, I had a really nasty back injury, which meant I didn't then go down. So I didn't get to get my commando beret or badge or anything else. But it was already in the reserve forces, another physical training instructor with them. So I was 15 years with them. And I think it was really interesting on the necessities now and on, you're far too old to can do that crazy stuff. We talk about our identity and his interest. I live now literally about a kilometer across the fields from 40 Commando, which is the unit that I wanted to go, I came there for a few weeks, training them with them. And so I wanted to join. And it's been I came back and move back down here as part of the world. And when in the 30s. Because a lot of people that I met in the gym and go training. They're all guys because I'm gonna say mindsets. A lot of my mates here now are the commandos who joined at about the same time, and we just get on really well. It's funny, you know, my life took a change through an accident, and I've had a great life. But I look back when that that I don't want to be a could have should have would have I don't want to regret anything. But that would have been a very different life to me to go off into the Burien everything else so unfortunately, I didn't get cut off. So I haven't got a tattoo. That's the one tattoo and I would have had haven't actually got one there wasn't going to be any Olympics. I haven't done an Ironman yet. But all together, Commander daggone. But yeah, in the military as physical training instructor, and I went into the fitness industry rather than the military as a civilian. So I was working in the fitness industry, physical training instructor with the army. As a reservist, I think I brought up on a farm as well you know, and I think growing up on the farms work to get done you get done that simple, there's no excuses there's either gets done or doesn't get done is your job you do it I was brought up quite a quite an old fashioned way. This job to get done, you get it done. If it's broken, you fix it. If you don't like it, it doesn't matter. Being from find your background, when you're out and you can't just call a specialist to come in and fix things or phone HR. You just get stuff done. And I think that translated well into my military mindset. When I was 30 I went into into the corporate world in business development, so a big change for me but I actually really liked it like developing business and that's what I was doing big pharmaceutical companies. But it's just a mindset right? What are we gonna do? Who do I help? How do I do it wasn't like, I don't care what the training said I don't care what they say no, I'm here. I'm here to fix it and find a way and I think that's my personality shaped through my parents through the farm to get stuff done. The military is just paying to deal with it. Being quite innovative

in the military, right? Yeah,

it's just get stuff done. Just make our I think that all that has shaped me as a person I want to work on the clients now. Yes, they is funny because I'm not hardcore, you know, I'm not some Navy SEAL. I'm not shouting at people when I work with them is all even my PTI days. It's all about fun. But we're here to do a job you really get things done. And if there's a problem, great, but how do you fix it? This is I think that's where you think about the Commandos, Navy SEALs, the great guys, it's a problem, fix it, that there's this that fix it mindset. And I think that's how we come across clients and I have got real problems, you know, people with a team, or with cash flow or something that's very easy to feel like there's no way out. And I think yeah, my mindset is pretty much well, now we can't see a way out. Yeah, we just kind of fix it.

mindset. And then the training and the fitness training mindset to business. And I love your title, profit coach or profit growth specialist is I guess the Yeah, for sure. Tell us a little bit about summit business and what y'all do for law firms.

I love that. And, you know, we actually touched earlier on the profit and revenue and marketing, because that was a couple of key levers for the case study, who made $2 million profit, you got a couple other recent case studies who made a million dollars profit. What are some of the things in the Oh, and operation systems that someone could look at? Today? Like if they're profitable, and they feel like their marketing is honed in if they hired 10? Golden Rules, we track all their numbers? Precisely? What are some of the tips on operation systems?

Yeah, I think it's like anything, you know, on the other side of the world, you guys and not even the building, I can't see it. And quite often, the business owner might even say it's actually just keep it really simple. Ask the team what's where are the bottlenecks? Why do people keep coming knocking on your office door? What are the emails that you keep getting? What are the questions that you keep getting? When you take a moment to step back? It actually really isn't that difficult. Just see where the problems are? Because there's no one thing and it could be anything, you know, it could be it could be client on board. I've here's a good one. Here is a great one. Right? What is your system that you've got for? For invoicing and chasing payment? Let's just start there. Right back to profit and cash, you know, lawyers might be great and doing a fantastic job, but they never get around to invoicing or they do it doesn't get collected. There's just

obviously get paid if you get the invoice. Yeah.

I worked with a client. We're great friends really good friends now probably working there for like six years. And yeah, he's incredibly intelligent guy, you know, he's six foot four former professional, international athlete. He's like a machine. But he was just so busy, busy, busy. He actually hadn't got around to it. He said, I'm out of cash, my cash don't understand. I don't understand. But all his work he hadn't, he's forgotten to invoice for six months.

Oh, my God,

get go an invoice. And also the other. And this is actually this such a really important one. Actually, there are two sides to his business. And he's so busy, busy, busy, busy. He hadn't stopped to realize that on one of his sides of the business, and 80% of his work, he was losing money. They hadn't just stopped and sat down and looked at the real cost, not just the time. But what is getting paid. I mean that at the end, we literally text his business and three or four years on counting wise, cleaning up the mix on service. Yeah, I see this a lot in in law firms. This is one of the simplest things to do. Many don't have the numbers, they're just first place. I start with a law firm. Look at your individual departments. First, you've got a department head. Now they're probably just busy doing all their fee earning. Let's get someone to start and measure some numbers. What What can you measure? What's simple, you know, how many hours? What are your What are your pain your lawyers? How many hours you've done? And what are we invoiced? And it's not about pulling people in and beating them up and then invoicing more than you because it's gonna be different bits of work. But it might you might find that this is a great story, I just tried to Fiona, she became a department head. And in something like 10 years, she'd never met target. She was really hard working really, really good. But she just kept taking on all the wealth that came at her. I hadn't filtered out all the low paying stuff. So just busy doing the low pain stuff, never did the high pain stuff. And no one had stopped. Okay, we know you're working 80 hours a week. Where's the money, and no one has stopped to think. And honestly, it's simple things like that will make a massive impact in the profit and cash in your business. Just do simple. Thanks.

Yeah, one of the lessons I learned early in my career, but which I learned to read, they should teach it in high school, is there's a big difference between working hard and doing the most important stuff. You know, I know that's a basic thing to say. But so many employees, you know, like either they're hard working and the, like you said they take on everyone else's problems. What do you think is the easiest way to become a person who delivers results instead of just effort?

As the business owner, right? No, no, no, no, absolutely. You know, once you, once you stop billing hours, in running a law firm, you have a different set of objectives that you need to set for yourself and manage your own your own mindset. So, you know, we covered PPro, you've touched a little bit on the finance, I'd love to hear about some innovation, that is important for law firms and businesses in general.

That's an interesting one. Yeah. So it will also mean chat and GTP. And AI, we know the world is going to change and be taken over by machines. And I think that that is coming. And I'm not an expert on that stuff. And I'm going to make a statement on it. But when we talk about innovation in business, we're actually not talking about the big picture stuff, the big game changes, or we're looking at is the small stuff. If I had two screens on my PC, I'd be quicker, you know, and it certainly sounds crazy. But it's often the little things like that, that make the difference is the I don't know you walk into the foyer in the office and got to walk around a plant pot, extra 10 meters, because you put a rugby plant in, get the damn thing out of the way and save everyone 10 steps four times a day is a crazy example. But we really are looking for the small things. And you know, it, I can't give examples now. But there's so many little things.

I'm showing John, we just did a book club with our staff with our team. And every week we read a chapter of a book by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time, it was my fourth or fifth read. But it's like, you know, one of the things I took from it is, you know, Eat That Frog, the basic principle is that you pick the three most important things that you have to do that day, and you get them done first thing in the morning. Yeah, and if you don't eat a frog, when it's a little teeny tadpole, it grows into a big hairy Toad with like, hairs coming out of warts and stuff like that, and you definitely don't want to eat it, once it starts looking nasty on your desk. And the one thing I took from that was, you know, the super focus time, like you said, you know, so if you find that powerful time in the morning, for me, it's like, you know, between 830, and nine, or between eight and nine, get to the gym, and then my mind's like, super clear. And then if you can, like, crush out those important tasks, first thing in the morning, when you're like, your brains at optimal levels, your Facebook's off your WhatsApps off. And so it was the super focus, but highly recommend that book, you know, the last thing, and then we'll get into just a couple personal things about you. Is team Prof. It. Yeah, it's right in there. How do you get the team to self leadership and high engagement?

Yeah, okay. There's, there's a big question. Like, I'll only do that a few minutes. It's it can be done. I think there's a few things actually. Or I tend just trying to a friend of mine who's he was a partner at a big law firm over here, just trying to today. I think, you know, the whole the whole model of being attorneys and lawyers. You go to college you learn to be a lawyer, you bill hours you get into Jr. Wrong, you bill hours and the whole ecosystem, if you like of progressing through your career, is being a lawyer, being a lawyer, being a lawyer, no one really stops and says, Okay, now money to manage people, we need to listen and lead and communicate. And I'm not saying it's always bad. But there's often a bit of a gap in in leadership and engagement, because everyone's just busy locked in their cells doing their hours. So there's no one thing fits all, as, as so many good information out there you can share. But I think the key thing that I felt were building some of my clients is you can write account was where's the business going? What are we trying to achieve? Otherwise, people just get locked in, do their hours go home, the end of the year, how big they've they've ticked enough boxes. But human beings were tribal at the end of the day, and we liked to be engaged with to be working with, for the business owners Sunday, let's step back and think okay, what do you want to achieve with the business? Is it is it to grow, to sell? Is it to grow to acquire? Is it to be the best local firm properly? And I think get above the numbers, not just about turnout and plant profit, what are you trying to achieve there as a business owner, it could be, we want to be the best family law provider in our state, or we want to be the go to people for fathers are trying to get access to their children, what whatever reason, whatever, whatever the thing is, and I appreciate they're gonna have different departments, but get really clear what they're what they're trying to achieve. And that takes a bit of time to think about. And when you start to do that, and you put words around it and get real meaning to it, not just the vision statement that sits in the drawer now and remember, but make it a real kind of living thing. And I think from that it's all about having the real quality of vision caught on what you will, yeah, how are we going to get there. And we talk about value statements, which no one remembers Anyway, well even knows what they mean. The next step, I would always say like I so I'm going to make up some values. Now. I'll do respect, and we'll do integrity and customer service and blah, blah, blah, and all, but I'll smile and ignore them. The next step no one ever does is Okay, so we've got these values. What are the behaviors attached to these values? So if I'm talking about integrity, my behaviors would be I don't tell a client, I'm going into a meeting, if I'm not going into a meeting, I don't tell them a half. I haven't done by tomorrow morning. If it won't be done by tomorrow morning. I go on forever that that lawyers, if that's integrity, that's integrity. Don't tell your colleagues or your clients, you've done work if you have done it, if you've made a mistake, if you're running late, be open, because these are the behaviors that people can actually measure and be held accountable to. And that is when you start and you've got to generate a culture or an environment where people are comfortable in failing They're comfortable to be a little bit vulnerable. It's really hard, really, really hard to do. From friends I've worked with in the military and certainly read our Special Forces, this robot egos and was almost worse than most. When you listen to some interviews with some of that Navy Seals and special forces, guys, you know, when they go come up off an aberration, okay, what went wrong? What did we do well enough, and every single one of them has to be open to I misfired on that I missed the point, I didn't get the communication, right. The because if you don't acknowledge your mistakes, you can't learn. And it takes a big man or big woman or a big person to do that. And it's quite a special individual. I think it's hard, really hard to go on that journey really hard to go on the journey for people to feel vulnerable. Patrick Lencioni is, I think he calls it 555 levels of dysfunctional team, I call it the five levels of high performing team, the very first level is trust, you've got to be able to trust the team. And then going above that goes into feeling able to feel for vulnerable. It's a hell of a journey to go on. It's tough, because many people, especially lawyers, as well, and then we're going to sit there and got a guy messed up on his case and the eye light and I'm fine yesterday. But it is it's once you start to get that and I do it with my clients, and I'm working with the partners and the head of department. Once you can get them openly admitting they are not good at managing a team or they're not good at managing time. Once they admit that we we will help. It's a journey to get there. Don't get me wrong. It's not a quick fix. When you start to get that Mike and you can get some amazing team. And you start to get that engagement throughout the fact that that's what creates a great firm is two people in there.

So I'd like to wrap up with just a couple personal questions. You can just give us quick answers on this one. Who's your football team?

I can't I don't support any sport at all. After all my sports and all my life. I've never I've never support anything. I'm just gonna say England, they always lose the boatyard. Probably I think, I don't even know the US but over the United Kingdom, there's Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. And the other three, they always support whoever's whoever's playing against England. That's kind of the roll over it. You got to England that all support

if you need an American football team, I'll offer you hop on the bandwagon with the Miami Dolphins society living in South Florida. And I've been suffering for the past 20 years. But it looks like we finally got a breakthrough. What do you do for fun?

Fun, Orange. You know what? I love that word because I think life should be fun. Yeah, well, I haven't really been killed a few times. It's stupid things I'm getting up to. And I work everyday. It's a gift that I think we should all be able to have fun every day. Regardless of situation. I've got two amazing boys. They're annoying as hell most of the time, love and love them to bits. They really are. Especially standard school holidays, or it gets in the way. And I've been getting out. But I kind of count my blessings every morning. I'm not religious, but I count my blessings that we're all healthy. Even despite my croaky voice to lovely boys, they're fun, I go, I play with them. There's an eight, I'm getting them into surfing. I love sport. So what I'm not trained the last couple of months, I try and train four or five times a week, and I love training in the morning, if somebody will let me now. But when it's a run, even a 10 minute hits, I got pull up bars as I'm out in the rain on the gravel treat myself like is hell week with a condo or something, just actually that that 10 minute hit session, pull ups, whatever it might be press ups, cold shower, you're on. And I think if I if I can get my day structured around, doing some exercise, being healthy, see my boys, making sure my wife is healthy. And then it's kind of been a good day.

It's already a winner a couple more. Are there one or two software's you like or things you enjoy technologies that you'd share with folks?

Not really no, I'm not a tech at all. I think I use LinkedIn a lot. That's what I'm all about. So really expanding, I know is very good as far as automating a lot of things on LinkedIn.

But I'm not expanding, you said.

Yeah, it's an automation tool for finding and messaging and connecting. On LinkedIn. It's on our LinkedIn don't like it using external softwares things. At the I don't really we use a CRM system. I don't even know who's made it is thunders put things together. For us, but I don't really use Zoom. I use Zoom a lot. I'm pretty good to zoom now.

That's because you're like a requirement for business. Yeah, absolutely. One Are there any podcasts or webinars you'd like?

podcasts or webinars? Socionics homotopy. I love Alex's stuff. But I want to be like Alex Olmos. I want to get like a 50 inch chest, a gringo mustache. And I have a very beautiful wife and just go lift weights all day but I think Alex Honnold did some amazing stuff and I love what he does with what I do. So he's a good point, actually. The Profit System Follow, we just pulled together all some of the best knowledge out there into our system. So it's not our ideas. It's Alex hormones. It's Donald Miller is Mike MacOSX. So we're bringing this all kept up to date to bring in the best stuff. I love Alex. I love the way he delivers it. I love the way it's nice and simple. He cuts through nonsense. I think Alex does not listen to a lot of his stuff. He does some really good stuff. But what he does the question, What do I love to do? I think my soul food is surfing. That's kind of my big. That's my big love in my life. Not like I wish to do much now with my boys. But then when I'm when I'm surfing, I'm on my element there. I just do love getting on the waves have not served America yet. So that's got to be on my on my tick list over there.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time and all of your insights. By the way, if you'd like John, I'm sure he did. He did a webinar. So you can find all of our webinars on our YouTube channel 10 Golden Rules YouTube channel. There's actually if you can't find it, there's a link on our website to YouTube. And John did this with slides. And it was much more or less conversational, much more structured. So if you want to get a little bit deeper in his stuff, and tell us where we can find you.

are some in the links in the show notes down below. John, thank you so much. I feel a little better. You notice a little scratchy voice he's but he got it through it. Of course God managed

it. Yeah. Thank you, Jay. Lovely to speak to as always, thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com