The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Scaling a Law Firm: Mark Reel Jr.'s Journey from Solo to Multi-Million Dollar Practice
In this eye-opening episode of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, join the conversation with Mark Reel Jr., founder of Real Father's Rights. Discover how he transformed his passion into a thriving family law firm dedicated to advocating for fathers.
Dive deep into his journey from other careers to law, his innovative approach to growing a law firm, and his mission to change the narrative in family court. Don't miss these valuable insights and the inspiring story of betting on oneself to create monumental change.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
I got a good one here. So during law school, my focus is on labor and employment law and I went to the ABA conference. It was in Chicago, so I went down the street and at lunchtime they had the big keynote presenters, because everybody's in one room and it was a woman talking about implicit bias. And this study, all the studies, showed that the darker your skin, the longer your prison sentence, and there was an even larger gap between women and men. So men get more prison time for similar offenses than women, and the darker your skin, the more prison time you get. So if this study was so dialed in that the judicial system was easier on women, tougher on men and then even tougher on men of color, how is that not creep into family court?
Speaker 3:Hey there. I just want to take a quick break from today's podcast to tell you about an event that we're hosting August 1 and 2. I'm going to be hosting a small, intimate event for solo and small firm lawyers here in our offices in Fairfax, virginia. If you've never been to a great legal marketing event before, or even if you have, this is going to be the place for you to start. If you're running a small law firm and you're looking for ways to attract more clients without spending a lot more money, we're going to be diving deep over those two days into all the little DIY things you can do, even if you have a small team. This is going to be perfect for a law firm that's doing between about $500,000 and a million dollars in pipeline revenue. If you're making more money than that, good for you. You're doing a lot of things right, but this event isn't for you.
Speaker 3:Let me tell you what this is not. This is not an event where, under the guise of a seminar, we're going to be selling you websites, pay-per-click ads or other digital marketing media. That's not our space in the market. This is where you're going to learn how to effectively use your next hour and your next dollar in growing your law firm. We'll be part lecture and part workshop. There'll be some prep work to do before the event and some post-event follow-up so we can answer lingering questions and keep you motivated to building a better life for you and your family Together. Let's figure out why you're not making more money, getting better cases and converting more of your leads. Again, this is August 1 and 2 in our offices in Fairfax, virginia, and if you want to be on the early list of people who are getting up-to-date information, just shoot me an email at ben at greatlegalmarketingcom.
Speaker 2:That's ben at greatlegalmarketingcom, and I'll make sure you're one of the first to know. Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone. This is Ben Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast where each episode I get to interview people that are inside or outside of legal who are making a ding in the world. And today we are inside of legal with Mark Real R-E-E-L, and the firm is Real Fathers Rights. So it's a family law firm limited. I think we're going to hear to representing dads husbands and Mark has put up some. He shares a lot of his journey, which is really important. This is kind of a second career for him as I look through his bio, and he's putting up some really big numbers in a family law practice out in California. So I want to get him on the program, talk with him. You all can listen into this conversation as two lawyers just chat about business.
Speaker 1:I'm good. I'm good, how are you?
Speaker 3:doing, sir, I'm doing good. We're recording this. It's early June of 2024. We're out here near Washington DC. We actually had tornadoes last night. They were a little bit north, like 15 miles north, come through which we've been watching. The rest of the country have really bad weather. You know for months flooding and stuff in California, a lot of Midwest storms. We don't have that stuff here. Yesterday North we had a tiny bit of rain but North hey, I'm a Midwest boy. I'm Indiana born and raised.
Speaker 1:We watched tornadoes on the front porch in the summer.
Speaker 3:I cannot imagine and you look, you probably got in your truck and went and chased them too I just cannot imagine that feeling of helplessness, actually, if some weather disaster is just pouring down on you. But yeah, but let's start here. So tell us a little bit about yourself to we're going to dig into, like the firm and the model for the firm, and how you're growing and attracting not only clients because people want to know about that but how do you attract talent to the firm and keep them in order to deliver? So give us a little bit of your backstory, really really big day, you said early in June.
Speaker 1:It is June 6th of 2024, which is a big day because today is actually my firm's third birthday. So yeah, so we've been in business for three years. As you mentioned, this is my second. Maybe even you could call it my third career. Right out of school, I was a former college baseball player. I worked in professional baseball for a handful of years and even up and through law school. During law school, during my last semester of law school, I found out I was going to be a dad and I didn't want to spend 200 days a year on the road working in professional baseball, so I transitioned into the fitness industry and I spent about four years working in the fitness industry and it actually took COVID-19. It took two COVID-19 shutdowns for me to go back and take the bar exam, covid-19 shutdowns for me to go back and take the bar exam, and once I had taken the bar exam, I realized that I actually wanted to pursue a career in law and so that's what led me to founding Real Fathers Rights.
Speaker 3:So pause there everyone who's a youngin, because we get law students listening to this. The point Mark just made is you don't need to have it all figured out when you're 18, or even when you're 22 or 23, right, there are many journeys through life and you never know what is going to hit either natural disasters, injuries, especially if you're in the sports industry, people that you run into and meet and you're not the first person who's doing something really cool and is like. You probably weren't even thinking about this when you're in college, and you certainly weren't thinking about it when you were applying.
Speaker 1:I was going to be the next Theo Epstein. If anybody knows that name, he was hot.
Speaker 2:The.
Speaker 1:Cubs won the World Series while I was in law school at Chicago Kent College of Law. That was the big name I was going to be the next Theo Epstein. What was going to differentiate me in professional baseball was going to be my JD Ended up literally quitting working in professional baseball the day I graduated law school, so that didn't work out. But yeah, I wouldn't be where I'm at today if I wouldn't have learned all those lessons and kind of this winding path.
Speaker 3:All right, so to show you my ignorance, theo Epstein, no, theo.
Speaker 1:Epstein. He is president of baseball operations Now. He's worked for various major league organizations and the story in the industry is he was working for the San Diego Padres while he was going through law school and he was the general manager of the Boston Red Sox when they broke the curse. And I believe he was president of baseball operations when the Chicago Cubs broke their long dry spell and won the World Series. So he's kind of legendary in baseball lore for breaking the two biggest curses.
Speaker 3:So all right. So you were on a path and obviously that gave you passion and energy, and you're a former athlete. I'm curious do you miss any of that? I don't like to use the word regret, but do you miss the path not taken at any time now? Yeah, it sounds a lot cooler than it was. Yes and no.
Speaker 1:So my brother still works in professional baseball. He's an athletic trainer, director of of the for the Seattle Mariners, and I was just over in Arizona this weekend with him so to see him doing that, to see him traveling still being involved in the game like that, do I miss some of it? Yes, would I trade it for what I'm doing now? Hell, no.
Speaker 2:Right, he worked for the Diamondbacks.
Speaker 1:last year I got to go to my first couple world series games got my fix and we're good to go there you go, all right.
Speaker 3:So three years in to your practice. Congratulations and happy birthday to that. The practice is real. Father's rights r-e-eL, which is really cool. I got to imagine you didn't change your last name to brand, but that was brilliant. When did you get, or how did you get, the idea to do family law and then to niche family law down to representing?
Speaker 1:dad. So during my last semester, january of my last semester of law school, I found out I was going to be a father, and not just a father to one. I was going to have twins, and so I now they're. They're six years old. I have a little boy, a little girl, and when they were born I found myself in family court. So I knew nothing about family court. I walked into family court my first time as the client, thinking that every other dad that was in the courtroom was a deadbeat and they were trying to get away from responsibility. And I'm this unique person fighting for my rights to be in the lives of my kids, to be in the lives of my kids. And weeks into it, I quickly realized that my belief of what family law was and what happened in family court could not have been further from the truth.
Speaker 3:What did you find when you were there For those of us who have not been in family court either personally or professionally?
Speaker 1:So 99.999% of parents, both mom and dad, will fight with everything they have to be in their kids' lives and I'll say this not to be controversial and maybe you'll get some people who follow me around on social media posting the hate but less than 15% of custodial parents are fathers. So in general, fathers get screwed and that's probably putting it lightly. You're presumed to be the unfit parent, you're presumed to be a second class parent and it's getting better and laws nationwide are changing to reflect that. But it's a really, really tough challenge and it's really really mentally, emotionally and even physically challenging for a father going through family court.
Speaker 3:You know, when you read headlines and hear headlines about inherent bias right and things like this, this isn't one of the ones that comes up a lot.
Speaker 1:I got a good one here.
Speaker 1:So during law school, my focus is on labor and employment law and I went to the ABA conference.
Speaker 1:It was in Chicago, so I went down the street and I went to the ABA conference. It was in Chicago, so I went down the street and at lunchtime they had the big keynote presenters, because everybody's in one room and it was a woman talking about implicit bias and this study, all the studies, showed that the darker your skin, the longer your prison sentence, and there was an even larger gap between women and men. So men get more prison time for similar offenses than women, and the darker your skin, the more prison time you get. Well, here in California I can name five judges off the top of my head that I have been in front of as a practicing attorney that either have or are now on the criminal bench of as a practicing attorney that either have or are now on the criminal bench. So if this study was so dialed in that the judicial system was easier on women, tougher on men and then even tougher on men of color, how is that not creep into family court?
Speaker 3:And your experience is that it does, and that's what led to taking your passion, becoming a lawyer, taking the bar, becoming a lawyer and taking this position in the marketplace. So where, along the journey, mark from the time you graduated law school.
Speaker 1:I graduated law school in 2017. And then I took the bar in October of 2020. So I w I was one of them that I took the COVID bar.
Speaker 3:After, right After you said, I think, a couple of shutdowns, you're like, okay, maybe I need to switch gears and and where along that timeline did the idea of and I'm going to start my own law firm Was starting your own law firm?
Speaker 1:the thing you did after you took the bar, yeah, so I was looking back on it. No one would have hired me If I said I want to be a family law attorney and I would have went out and applied for jobs. There is no way in hell that anybody would have offered me. If the version of me three and a half years ago applied to real father's rights today, the resume would probably get passed over rather quickly. It had been over three years since I had touched anything legal. I'm sitting there studying for the bar and it's like I haven't thought about torts since I was a 1L. It's been damn near a decade.
Speaker 3:Let alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Let alone taxes.
Speaker 1:One hundred percent so.
Speaker 3:I Nuisance. That must have been. That must have been fun. I mean, I cannot imagine like the nightmare of having to go back. It's hard enough. When you're getting out of law school and you're tested on all these things and most of them, like you, will never be asked a question or need to know the day after the bargain for the rest of your career, that's hard enough. You're doing it several years and then to answer your question, I was in a mode during COVID.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way, and during that first prolonged COVID shutdown, I was obsessive. I basically lived in Barnes and Noble, buying courses, reading books, doing anything and everything I could to get ahead. I saw it as the opportunity of a generation to be able to get ahead. And then we go back to work and I'm like okay, I'm locked in, I'm ready to go. I'm so much in such a better spot than I was four, five, six months ago in terms of what I know and the knowledge I've gained. We worked for exactly 23 days and then the lovely County of Los Angeles shut us down again.
Speaker 1:So the following day I was sitting. I lived in an apartment in Glendale, california at the time, and I was sitting on the rooftop and I'm like what am I going to do? I'm absolutely exhausted from the books and the courses and I'd put everything into what my next couple of steps in the fitness industry were going to be and all of a sudden they got ripped out from underneath me. I pulled my laptop out and it just so happened. Days earlier they had delayed the bar exam once again and the deadline to register for what originally was the July 2020 bar exam was Friday and I had about eight weeks to study, so I had not touched anything legal, I had not done anything.
Speaker 1:It was serendipity, it was one of those things where, looking at it, it was like all of those things to fall in place for me to be sitting there on a Wednesday afternoon and I'm like I have until Friday to register for this. And I registered for it, thinking this is my next challenge. This is my last opportunity. I went to law school but I could never actually call myself a lawyer. This is going to be the last opportunity. I have to do this because I'm going to be busy with kids, career, everything else. I'm never going to put my life on hold for eight weeks to study for a test career everything else.
Speaker 3:I'm never going to put my life on hold for eight weeks to study for a test. That's amazing. Now you dropped a clue there and I hope that people caught. The clue is that during time of shutdown and stuff, you were not just screwing around on your phone and I'm holding my iPhone up there. You were at Barnes and Noble reading getting. Were the courses in the reading related to like building your own gym or running your own gym? Anything and everything.
Speaker 1:I actually had a list on my phone during the during 2020, I read 104 books and did 24 courses. So I was doing everything. I was taking that money we were getting from COVID and in California they were abating everybody's rent and I wasn't paying rent. I was buying courses, I was buying books, I was brainstorming. I'd been down the entrepreneurial journey before, when I was in college. I'd started my own company running amateur baseball tournaments, and I'd been mildly successful for a few years. But I start reading these books, whether it be Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson, Alex Hermosi, all these people I start reading these books. Whether it be Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson, Alex Hermosi, all these people. I start reading these books and I'm like I could do this. I just need my idea. What is my $100 million idea? And I started really kind of doing some soul searching for that. But, to be completely honest, it didn't come to me until after I had taken the bar exam. That, oh, the idea is right in front of me and it comes from my personal life.
Speaker 3:Well, so your bookshelves are aligned with my bookshelves. Same three authors, gurus of the many that I'm sure you read, the same three that you just mentioned, are filling my shelves as well. But again, you make the point that opportunity is everywhere and the question is, are you ready to seize opportunity? And so many people kind of just wait around, as you know, mark, and wait around for someone to teach them something Like I'm going to get. Teach me something When's no excuse in America today, with with libraries and bookstores and use bookstores, there's no excuse for not being able to get whatever information and training you want, if you will, at the lowest level, just go and find a book and read on Apple podcast and books, like all of this information is out there in so many forms YouTube, podcast, books, courses.
Speaker 1:Whatever your liking is, it's out there and we're in a. In terms of business, it's never been more democratized, there's never been more opportunity because of. I mean, I started my phone, my firm in my bedroom, filming videos on my cell phone, building my own website, like I had nothing. I had no one, I had no money, I had no reputation, I had no office. I had nothing. Everything is just there for the taking in today's world.
Speaker 3:So when you bless you, because this message is so important. And so when you decided to, I'm unemployable, probably I got to start my own law firm in order to work in the law, right, was it? Did you have the idea at that point? And family law, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:So so I know we have our friends, bill Houser and Andy Stickle, talk about me being some marketing genius, with the name, with the niche, with everything. It was nothing to do with that, it was. I'm passionate about this and I know there's a need in the market and I think I can provide a service better than anyone else can. And I set out to do that. I took the bar exam, I got.
Speaker 1:I continue to be frustrated in the fitness industry and the direction of the company I was with and I got around the first of the year and I'm like, okay, I need to be frustrated in the fitness industry and the direction of the company I was with and I got around the first of the year and I'm like, okay, I need to pick a date to quit. So at the end of February I put in my two weeks notice. Shout out 24 Hour Fitness. You fired me after I put my two weeks notice in and I didn't actually get my law license until May. So I had about a four month gap where I had quit my six figure job and had no income or post COVID, everything's going back to normal and I could not do anything other than get ready to launch this law firm.
Speaker 3:Which sounds like learning how to create your own website.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Starting to shoot videos, probably learning more and more about the law right? Because even though you had been in the thick of it, there's still niched down, learning to do, to learn. And so now get us to launch it's May of 2020.
Speaker 1:May 2024 or May 2021 was when I was sworn in as an attorney. I love telling the story. I went across the street to us because they had a notary there and she swore me in. I think she knew she was doing something illegal. She was not, and about two weeks later I officially got my paperwork back from the secretary of state. So June 6 6, 2021 was when the firm was officially founded, and you said I think you said you started out.
Speaker 3:I started out of it.
Speaker 1:I had a desk in my bedroom. I bought a couple of bookshelves to put in the background to make it look like I was sitting in an office and I got after it.
Speaker 3:Tell me about your first client.
Speaker 1:So I had contracted an agency. There's a larger story behind some of this, too, in terms of betting on yourself. So I had contracted with a PPC agency. This is pre-LSA ads. I had contracted with a PPC agency to build me out a PPC campaign. Their fee this was towards the end of May this is right after I'd gotten licensed. Their monthly service fee was $700. And they said the minimum they would do that for is to run $500 a month in PPC ads.
Speaker 1:I was like shit. I only had $788 in my bank account. So what did I do? I went to my 10-year-old MacBook that I was running my firm out of and I started doing some research MacBook that I was running my firm out of. And I started doing some research and I found out Google does not bill you until you've spent $500. So if I have a $500 budget for the month, that gives me 30 days to make that $500 to pay off that ad spend. So I paid what amounted to my last $700 to this PPC agency. No-transcript. 25 hours later, I was standing at a Regis that I technically did not have an office at yet, acting like my office was there, and I took $3,500 from a client and and and the rest is history. I mean the client that they actually ended up. They were trying to dodge all sorts of stuff. There's no great story with the client. They last as a client for like three months but I had that $500 made to be able to pay my Google ads budget at the end of the month.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a fat, that's a fabulous story. And so the PPC firm that you hired built out ad or ads. Did they build out any sort of sophisticated funnel One landing page and a phone number.
Speaker 1:that went straight to a cell phone that I was holding and for the first 90 days I answered that phone and did consultations on the spot.
Speaker 3:Do you remember what the creative was? I mean, they did a nice job.
Speaker 1:I'll give a shout out Empirical 360, elliot and Eric great dudes, but there really wasn't much. They built a very basic I think it was on WordPress landing page for the ads, basically pushing as many people as possible to call. And I went out and got a second cell phone number and it's still, truth be told, real Fathers Rights, the almost multi-figure firm our main phone line is technically a Verizon phone number that we're scared to change. It gets sent all sorts of different places now. But yeah, I would, literally it would. Basically they click on the PPC ad, they hit the landing page. It was yelling at them to call me right then and there all over, and I would answer the phone all day, all night, didn't matter. We're having a consultation right now.
Speaker 3:All right, now let's talk, because from 25 hours in getting your first $3,500 retainer to almost eight figure law firm.
Speaker 1:And we are?
Speaker 2:we are eight figure.
Speaker 3:We're about.
Speaker 1:We're about an $18 million run rate. We're about to be multi eight figure All right Multi eight figure.
Speaker 3:That's awesome and that's got to be. We've done the research.
Speaker 1:We're not eligible for any of the Fortune 5000, the law firm 500. But we can pretty confidently say we're the fastest growing law firm in the country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you don't need a badge to do that. You don't need one of the approved badges to do that, all right, but people are going to want to know how. Like, how did that happen with so many law firms who start, who struggle, and you had zero, virtually zero, budget? In fact, you went negative. You went negative. You were projected to go negative the first month until you found out that Google wouldn't send you a bill for a short while anyway. So now let's, as best we can, mark, help our listeners, learn from both the smart things you did and mistakes you undoubtedly made on the journey and mistakes you undoubtedly made on the journey, and then give us and we will get to like, tell us about the firm today how many lawyers, how do you operate, what the systems are, but synthesize that journey for us. Yeah, there are seasons to it. It's got to be a cool story.
Speaker 1:So the first season, that first three months, I ended up. It took me 92 days to do my first $100,000. Every book I read, everything said if I made $50,000, $60,000, my first year was a success. So we're talking about 25 hours in I get my first retainer. I'm addicted to this drug and I can tell you our budget's never been $500 since I got that retainer. I think we bumped it up to $3,000 that next month, but in the first 92 days it was just a mad sprint. It was just me, me myself and I. So if I need to call and collect, if you called in, I answered the phone. If you needed a consultation, I did it. I represented all of the clients and, like I said, 92 days to $100,000. And it looks like I have this from the outside. It's I've got this, this rocket ship to the moon.
Speaker 1:But I was absolutely miserable. I hated it. I was so stressed out, I was so worn down, I was trying to do everything, and so I actually spent Q4 in 2021, that next three months, considering shutting down my law firm. So I had actually gotten to December of 2021. And I had this brilliant idea it had taken off like a rocket ship. I was so miserable doing what I was doing that I was considering and I had actually come to the decision that I was going to shut it down. It just wasn't what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:For those who were around you family members, team members, clients, whoever would they have had that sense that you were really miserable? Or were you faking it on the outside? I was definitely faking it on the outside.
Speaker 1:I mean I had more money than I'd ever had before. My life's moving at this pace and I have all these things going on and I'm in court every morning and I have all these consultations and I'm working with vendors. It sounds really, really cool. But I was not big on the practice of law. That day-to-day grind of litigating 50, 60, 70 family court cases did not light me on fire. Like the marketing, like the big picture stuff I still love getting on. We represent a lot of high profile accounts. I still love getting on the phone talking about strategy around PR, big picture stuff on cases.
Speaker 1:But that day-to-day grind, that day-to-day I'm not a detail person. That day to day detail required to be a great lawyer. I did not possess it and I also. My mind was not big enough. I couldn't grasp the idea of growing and scaling beyond where I was at. I remember I went and looked at an office that was 1300 square feet and I was too scared to pull the trigger. Well, what if I can't hire anyone? There had been an attorney and the irony is he's actually coming to work for me here in less than a month. But he looked at me. It was one of my first court cases Southwest Justice Center, marietta, california and he looked at me and he said it's impossible to hire good people. And you know what? I believed him and so I'm like I'm never going to be able to find the people I need. I'm never going to be able to replace myself. I can't see myself doing this for the next 30 years.
Speaker 3:So that's a mindset problem that almost every lawyer I've ever run into has. It's that I don't want to let go of the vine. Even though I hate it, I'm probably the best one to do it, and I can't vision being able to do just what I love, which is the marketing and the strategic work. So for you, like, did you walk into a room? Did you read a different book, did you hear a podcast? What was it for you, mark, that said, oh shit, oh shit, yeah, I can change.
Speaker 3:There's a very clear moment and I can give myself permission, I'll give another shout out and I actually just talked to andy yesterday.
Speaker 1:So I had attended an smb team event bill hauser and andy stickle in q3 and I hadn't pulled the trigger because I hated what I was doing. And I I was like I can never do this. I can never.
Speaker 3:I yeah, yeah. What am I going to do this for?
Speaker 1:And I had actually made the decision. I'm like you know, I'm pretty good at this business stuff and I love it. So you know what I'm going to. I'm going to sign up for their event. I think it was free, maybe like a dollar or something. I think I went VIP. I was paid like 37 bucks to get the extra hour.
Speaker 1:And I had convinced myself that I was going to go into consulting. I was like I'm good at this marketing stuff, I can do this. And it was the time they did five day events and by the time I got to day two, I'm like chomping at the bit. I'm trying to do the math of when they're going to make their offer that I can sign up. And it was something to do with that week. It was right before Christmas 2021.
Speaker 1:My brain unlocked and I'm a very competitive person. Basically, I start seeing these stories, start hearing these people and I'm like wait, I'm telling myself I can't do it when that clown is crushing it, like this is a me problem. And it just from that moment forward my brain was unlocked to. I gave myself permission to fail. I'm a big. I actually just I'm actually reading Jesse Cole book owner Savannah bananas. I love what he's doing. It's normal, gets you normal results. And I started realizing that there was so much opportunity that I didn't have to fit in, that I could be my own person and that, running a law firm, I could build the team around me, so that I only had to do what I absolutely loved.
Speaker 3:So the next step of the journey so now you're getting your brain wrapped around this. I can change, I can do this, giving myself permission to not be the guy who does all of the legal work. All right, is the next step then? A particular hire, a particular process you're putting into the firm. I was still solo. Were you still solo at that point?
Speaker 1:I had hired my mom. My mom was posting videos on social media. So it's me and my mom. Every single month, my mom is telling me she's like, if you don't have the money, you don't have to pay me. But it was her and I. She still works for the company. But so the next decision wasn't a sexy decision, and I think it's a decision a lot of.
Speaker 1:I always use the phrase I'm not your guru when people want to talk about marketing. They want to. I'm not your guru, like I do it. And if the person teaching it was good enough to do it on their own, they wouldn't be teaching you it. They would be making more money doing it. And so I made the decision that I was going to eat shit. I don't know if I can curse on here, but I do. So I made the decision that I was going to get after it and do the things I hated every single day for the six months to put myself in position to be successful. So I made the decision. The first thing it wasn't what am I going to strategically do. It was I'm going to do the work, even when I don't want to do the work. I'm going to be a professional about it. I'm going to show up every single day and do what needs to get done to take that next step forward.
Speaker 3:Now I'm curious about your childhood. Was this part of your family DNA? Do you think Mom or dad entrepreneurs discussions around the dinner table, or is this just?
Speaker 1:around the dinner table, or is this just yeah? No, my mom worked as a secretary at the school for 20 years before she joined the firm. My dad just recently earlier this year retired after spending over 30 years on the assembly line in a factory. My grandpa was an entrepreneur, but I was too young to really realize what he was doing at that time. This was one of those things where what I did in 2020 really started to pay off, because you go there and you read expert secrets for the first time and you're like, how is this applicable? How is this working? And then, all of a sudden, you go back and you read through your notes, you flip through the book and you're like, oh my gosh, now this makes sense.
Speaker 1:So the real payoff once my mind was unlocked, the real payoff from all the work I put in in 2020 started to come to fruition because I started seeing these things and I mean my view on books, on courses, any of those things is you're getting a viewpoint from someone who's already been through it. So I had this Rolodex of things that didn't make sense when I read them, that didn't make sense when I first took them. In that I start seeing situations and I'm like, there it is. This is what happened to so-and-so. This is how I'm going to get through it.
Speaker 3:During that time because you mentioned, expert Secrets is a Russell Brunson book you've been to was the event you went to with Bill and Andy? Was that a virtual event or a live event?
Speaker 1:Okay, Any other? Did you go to Funnel Hacking Live? No, I mean, I read all their stuff. I got all their books on my bookshelf. I didn't have the money to do that, so it was whatever I could get my hands on. Like, the number of $7 Russell Brunson products that I bought during that time period is insane. It makes no sense. We actually just pulled one out the other day. We're going to try a little bit. A little bit of preview of what we're doing at RFR. Here is I bought I bought the PowerPoint slides for the webinar, so I bought his 194 slide webinar pitch and we're going to we're going to implement that into some of our digital marketing now. So it was just anything I could afford, anything I could get my hands on. I'm just looking at it, being around it, feeling it, touching it, just taking it in.
Speaker 3:Okay, so now we're back. You decided to work really hard to grind it out for the next six months, and by that you mean showing up and being the lawyer, everything, everything my day.
Speaker 1:So during that, time period and this is what I think gets skipped by a lot of coaches, gurus, different things is like there's a season to eat shit and just get after it. I would and I tell this story a lot my days look the same. It was Groundhog's Day. I woke up at 4 am. From 4 am to 7 am I was doing legal work. 7 am I was doing legal work. 7 am I would put my suit on. I'm out the door to court. I would get back to the office. I'd usually get McDonald's, something on the way back to the office. I just had an executive suite, and from 1 to 6 pm I would do consultations every single day and then at 6 pm I'd go home. My fiance would have dinner ready, I'd eat and then by seven o'clock until about midnight I'm in my. I'm at the house working on legal work I needed to get done for the next day. So it was over and over and over again, doing anything and everything that needed to push the firm forward.
Speaker 3:That's monstrously difficult to do, day after day after day. It really is so good for you and then you know. So back to the question of who did you start to hire? How did you start to scale? But start here, like today, give us a picture of the framework. How many lawyers, team members, yeah, we have 19 lawyers.
Speaker 1:It's constantly changing. So we have 19 lawyers and, I believe, 79 full-time team members divided into very distinct departments. We have 13 people with managerial titles, so everything from my vice president of operations, who's my number two Jack, who everyone directly reports to, to a managing attorney, a managing paralegal, director of operations, billing manager, client care manager so we have fully functioning manager, client care manager so we have fully functioning. We have HR department. So we have just like any Fortune 500 business, any big or medium-sized business would have. We have all of those departments completely built out with leaders in place. So I'm not involved or even my number two, jack, is not involved in the day-to-day of any one department. That's amazing, I mean, it really is not involved in the day-to-day of any one department.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. I mean it really is. You're running 100 people under roof with lots of systems and processes and in telling the story we're still back when it's you and your mom. So, as best you can, how did you go from you and your mom to 100 people under roof doing the numbers that you're doing Like it couldn't all have been just buying advertising Looking back.
Speaker 1:We did it the hard way and I think that makes me who I am and makes our team who we are. Is I set out from the beginning If you do what everyone else does, you're going to get the results that everyone else is getting. Everyone else does. You're going to get the results that everyone else is getting. And so we set out from day one to be unique in family law.
Speaker 1:In our market it's a bunch of small firms. There's a lack of growth opportunity unless you want to open your own firm. The cultures a lot of times can be borderline, hostile or even full on hostile. It's not a space where there's a lot of intriguing employers, interesting work. There's no really mega players who are providing people places that they think they can be at for the rest of their career. It's not like I mean we have classmates, friends, everyone else who went into big law and it's like you get in with Kirkland or Sidley or any of these other mega firms. A lot of times it's like, okay, this is where I'm going to be for the rest of my career. In my space there wasn't that it's you're going to work until you're the senior associate and there's going to be nowhere to grow because the partner's just sitting there not doing anything and you're either going to have to lateral somewhere else and do the same thing or you're going to have to open your own firm.
Speaker 1:So from day one, really, we knew we wanted to be different. One of the unique things probably one of the best two or three hires I ever made is my now VP of ops, my number two, jack. We did not have a business operations department. I was the business operations department. So yeah, yeah, oh, everything, everything else. People are still amazed when I snap off a court date or like this is what happened. But we went out and we hired people intentionally that we knew were going to fill those roles. So I was paying Jack nearly $100,000 to do consultations.
Speaker 1:But we had a bigger vision. I knew he was my guy to run the entire organization. So why not hire him now and allow him to build it up? And that's one of those things is the business operations side of our business blew up. It was because I let go and I hired extremely talented people, and that's one of the things I think a lot of leaders, especially in the legal space, because they don't teach leadership. What they don't do is they don't allow lawyers, don't allow themselves to be comfortable unless they are the best at something. I can confidently say. I am not the best at anything at RFR and I'm perfectly okay with that. But you know what? Every single person on this team it will follow me and will listen to me, because my sole goal is to put people in position to succeed.
Speaker 3:So let's quick question what was Jack doing before Jack was in the fitness?
Speaker 1:So Jack and I had worked in the fitness industry. He had been my assistant manager and we had known each other for about five or six years, so he was a general manager in the fitness industry and after about six months of begging him, he finally made the leap to join me.
Speaker 3:You know that'll never work. Just hiring people in the fitness industry to run a law firm Like that'll never work. Right Describe for us is it is this a to the consumer? Is it a flat fee? Is it a billable hour? How do you manage that? It's kind of all be one big question. How do you manage that experience from the client's perspective? Because being a client in a family law matter can be one of the most, I think, never been there, one of the most scary things ever, because for most cases you just never really know how deep it's definitely definitely.
Speaker 1:I think the first piece we look at when it comes to client experience, and we have we have an entire department, we have a multi-person department, client care department that their sole purpose is to engage our clients and ensure they're happy. But take a step back. The first thing we need to do is look at really what the business is, and in family law and most other types of law, you really only have three parts of your business You're going to acquire the lead, you're going to turn the lead into a client and then you're going to service the client. That's it At its core. That's the path and obviously, with contingency, you get the money on the back end. With us, we get the money on the front end. That's part of the conversion from lead to client. So what we want to do is we want to remove all friction points that we can remove from the client experience.
Speaker 1:So if you call in, if you call RFR today, you would talk to our reception team and they would schedule you Most likely. If you called right now, it's 149. You probably get it. You could probably get a consultation in the next two or three hours. So you are talking to one of our intake specialists by the end of today and no one goes more than 24 hours from calling our office to talking to an intake specialist. Now, who are our intake specialists? They know nothing about law. We have guys who have sold mortgages, who have sold personal training, sold solar door-to-door. My only requirement for our intake people it's a sales role. I don't know why we don't call it sales and legal, but is yeah, we can.
Speaker 1:Yeah so my sales team. There's only two requirements. Number one is they have experience and success in high volume sales role, and this is actually, I think, in the job description. I want the people who have worked the shittiest jobs possible. So I want someone with experience selling and that's worked a terrible job. Those are my two requirements for a salesperson. And they give no legal advice. They do anything. They listen. I think most lawyers would be amazed and it's a conversation I frequently have that these people who call in they may have been. Think most lawyers would be amazed, and it's a conversation I frequently have that these people who call in they may have been served a restraining order, divorce, child support, whatever. They don't want legal advice in that moment. They want someone to listen to them. So we have a team of empathetic intake specialists who will listen to them, talk to them, explain what we do and then retain them as clients.
Speaker 3:When you onboard a new sales person, what's that training look like? Because you're getting someone, like you said, who's got experience but has tried to sell something really crappy before, or really hard, or they work for a horrible organization, right. So now they're coming here to sell quality but they don't know anything about legal. So give us a picture of what that looks like.
Speaker 1:In the legal space, we have this conception that we're selling something magical, that there's some superpower. We're not. So if you hire a good salesperson, they can sell. You hire a good salesperson, you can give them a script and, I kid you not, probably about half of our sales team has closed their first client within the first 48 hours of starting with us. So you hire good salespeople and you give them the script and we also introduce them to what we do and who we represent and what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Our key purpose indicator of the number of men that we're trying to help 33,000 men by December 31st of 2030. We share what our core values are and what we want to be and we also. There's this misconception a lot of times when they come in, that lawyers are big, bad, scary, tough, like I'm not going to be able to give legal advice. We also encourage them and tell them that we you don't need to do that, and I mean we have a team of nine salespeople right now. Once you get past four or five that are bought in, they kind of self train like the new person will be like, well, I can't do this, I can't do that, and the vet will look over and be like because you don't need to, so yeah, and all they really all they have to do is to be able to resell the good idea.
Speaker 3:It was to contact the firm, like that was a great decision you made today, you're in the right place, these lawyers here are awesome and they're going to try to help you. Now let's just take the next step. It is not that hard, but the biggest thing is the sales team needs to, I think, believe that the caller is in the right place and that you guys are living your core values and you will try to help them, because it's very hard to sell anything honestly if you don't actually believe.
Speaker 1:Someone who worked for me and then left said you know, after I did training, where he's like I'll sound like a used car salesman, but like you don't believe that we're that that's a big thing and my director talks about that all the time because obviously in in the legal space we get reviews, we get reviewed online, everything else and we probably have. In the last three years we've probably gotten close to 1500 five-star reviews. But what reviews get attention? The one-star reviews. So we have to be. I mean you have to ensure that your salespeople they actually believe in the product they are selling. And so that may mean when a one-star review comes in from a client they signed, sitting them down and saying, hey, here's the deal, here's what went south with this client, here's what actually happened, so that they don't lose confidence in asking for the sale at the end of that consultation.
Speaker 3:That's brilliant. Let me just talk. You and I we could do three hours on this stuff, but neither one of us has that time. People will be curious generally about the compensation scheme. Like, not specific numbers necessarily, but how do you like? What's the formula if that's a good word for compensating lawyers and attracting so many lawyers?
Speaker 1:First thing is and I'll credit this this is Layla Hermosi, who I will go on record saying I think is smarter than Alex, their husband and wife. She's the brains of the operation. I listened to her.
Speaker 2:You probably saw that.
Speaker 1:So I was at an event probably about two years ago and this is when we were really scrapping and clawing to hire and Layla presented and the concept she taught was you're putting all of this effort into acquiring one more client, doing one more deal, making that little bit of revenue. How does that effort compare to your effort recruiting? Because I can tell you, a senior attorney for me is $55,000 a month in revenue. A senior attorney with support staff is $1.1 million in top line for me. Why am I putting so much effort into one more client but I'm not putting that same effort into one more attorney? So it's something of. We work harder. It's a recruiting process. It's not an inbound application process. With RFR, you're more likely to hear from us, you're more likely to hear from recruiters. We have a hit list. There is a hit list of 10 attorneys in each of our markets. There's a hit list of paralegals that we want to work for us and we're going to do everything to get in contact with you. So we play an offensive game when it comes to recruiting and then, once you get them in your pipeline, it's showing them, making sure that it's the right fit on both sides. So yeah, do we go through and hey, okay, we have unlimited paid vacation and we actually push all of our people to take at least a week off. Do we do 401k with match? Do we pay for your medical Like? We do everything to make the job appealing in going through the process.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge guy on culture. I think our culture is so unique and there's so much energy and there's so much fun in what we do day in and day out. And then the number one thing at the end of the day, you got to pay them and so we. My philosophy is like number one is we're never going to fight over a trivial amount of money. So we had an attorney ask for $5,000, a unique candidate, not a ton of family law experience, but we really really liked him as a culture fit and he did have some. Well, we had to hire him as an associate and he asked for $5,000 more than what our top end of scale was.
Speaker 1:But he's a decade-plus attorney and I looked at Jack and I'm like are we really going to fight this guy over like $400 a month? So when you put it that way, his extra pay from going from $100 to $105 is less than $400 a month. Is it worth it to fight? No, but the unique thing we do is we're going to pay you at top of market, so your base is going to be at, or maybe even slightly above, market rate. And then you're going to have the opportunity we're going to give you a variable compensation contract that says if you hit certain metrics, if you do certain things, you can earn up to 30% of your salary in bonus.
Speaker 1:So if it's an attorney making $150,000 and that's the market rate for that attorney, hey, we'll give you your 150. You're worth that. But you know what? If you outperform it by these objective metrics, you can earn up to $200,000 in cash compensation this year. And that's usually. It's usually the last thing. We usually don't talk comp until the very end, but it's usually one of those things where you're really really kind of push someone over the edge. You provide them a great experience through the two or three interviews and then you say, hey, you have the opportunity not to earn above level Like. You have a chance to just blow the market out of the water.
Speaker 3:Two questions left. We're going a little bit over our time. What's your biggest headache right now? What do you? What or what are you trying to solve now, or looking at your vision for three and five years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're in a good spot. I would say this as we've grown, you start to look at your problems and there's these million little problems and it feels so overwhelming. But we kind of fixed that issue. We got locked in with a coach who comes in every quarter and we have these regularly scheduled things and we've started to fix that. But I think my biggest challenge personally my chief of staff and then Jack, my vice president operations. They demanded a few weeks ago that we put my weekly calendar together, because on the same day a couple of weeks ago I was at an event and I called them to check in and they're like, oh no, we've had the most productive week we've had in a while. And then I call my chief of staff and she says the same thing. And so for me it's getting out of the way. It's being the big vision, it's painting the future, it's making the big decisions, but then getting out of the way of the day to day and let these extremely talented people do their thing All right dude.
Speaker 3:People want to go look at your website, check you out on social media. People want to go look at your website, check you out on social media whatever. Yes, and you have your own podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're getting ready to film actually first time in this studio right after this, the Father's Rights Playbook. We talk about anything and everything. Family law Firm website realfathersrightscom. You can check us out there. I also put out quite a bit of content on my own around business growing a law firm. You can find me on LinkedIn, instagram, facebook. Mark Real Jr.
Speaker 3:And that's R-E-E-L and Real Fathers. R-e-e-l. Dude, thank you for spending time. That was awesome.
Speaker 2:We could do a couple hours.
Speaker 3:We'll have to get together live and in person at some point when we're on the same coast. It's been great. Have fun with your podcast. Good luck to you, because you're really somebody who's, I think, a great example of what's possible, thank you, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1:It was a pleasure being on with the man, the myth, the legend.
Speaker 3:All right, We'll talk later, Mark. Thank you sir.
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