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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
I Don’t Have Time for This: Guide to Smarter Money Decisions
In this episode of The Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben Glass sits down with Frank Rekas, a seasoned financial planner who’s carved out a unique niche helping law firm owners take control of their financial futures. From retirement planning and tax strategies to the often overwhelming process of wealth management, Frank breaks down complex concepts into practical, actionable steps—without the 4,000-question forms.
If you've ever thought, “I’ll deal with my finances later,” this conversation is your sign to start now—without the overwhelm. Whether you're planning your exit, scaling your firm, or just trying to make sense of tax strategies beyond the basic, this episode is full of insights tailored for entrepreneurial attorneys.
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.
We don't want to be overwhelming. You know, a lot of times they'll say well, can you send me a, you know, send me your planning agreement, or can you send me a list of the things that I need to do? And you know, sometimes when I do that it's like, oh my gosh, I don't have time for this. So by finding out what you want to do and what are the couple of hot buttons, then I can just summarize that in an email and this is what I need. Let's start here.
Speaker 2:I think that just hey everyone, welcome back. This is Ben Glass. This is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast and longtime listeners know that really I'm blessed, as each episode I get to interview and spend some time with people inside or outside of legal who are dinging the world, and today I'm going to talk to Frank Rekus. So Frank and I have been following each other a bit on social media for probably a long time now. Frank is a financial planner, wealth management guy, but really serving the attorney market. He's a niche within a niche is what we would call that and a couple of weeks ago we spent a little bit of time together down at our friend Jay Berkowitz's event at 10 Golden Rules down in warm, sunny Florida, and so it was good.
Speaker 2:I said well, frank, I need to get you on the podcast and let's talk about some of these things, because you're running with a lot of, I think, these events and running with Jay's friends and other of our friends. You're running with a lot of lawyers who tend to be successful. They're good lawyers, they are improving their business skills and I think a lot of times the whole sort of wealth planning, financial planning, tax management, tax mitigation honestly like gets pushed off to the side, because you know we're good at what we do, we like what we're doing and there's oftentimes, I will tell you, sort of a trust factor, like it's the same thing our clients, our potential clients, go through, like how do I know whether to trust this guy or gal as a person and whatever strategies, and it's the same thing our clients experience. So I want to talk to you about that as well, because I think you'll have some good insight there for our listeners. So welcome, and I assume you are in sunny Florida today. Well, first, off.
Speaker 1:Thanks a lot for having me, ben. It was really great to meet you in person a couple of weeks ago. I thought that was one of the best parts of the session, with Jay sitting with you at the power table and listening to you speak. And you know, congrats on the little bit over a year anniversary. Glad you're feeling well. So yeah, I started working with law firm owners. It just kind of happened organically.
Speaker 2:If you want me to kind of get into that story a little bit, Sure, yeah, absolutely, because you know we teach the riches are in the niches and we teach personal injury lawyer. You know across the whole spectrum, like is there a subspace within your space where you can go in and stand out and that's what you're doing and demonstrating? So how did that happen?
Speaker 1:So many years ago, when I was working at one of the corporate financial services companies, I received what we would call an orphan that's when your advisor leaves. You have a policy and investments and account and I went out to see an attorney. It was a family law attorney and we had to make some changes. We did a little bit of business. She referred me to another attorney, that attorney referred me to another attorney and then a couple of the guys at the office heard that I was going on a couple of different appointments working with attorneys and then they asked me to go out with them. So over the course of you know, a couple decades, I'll say, I ultimately built my client base probably 60, 70% of people that are law firm owners or attorneys.
Speaker 1:And I was in management briefly at the last firm, I was at Equitable, and when I relieved myself of those duties and, as we say, promoted myself back to being a planner, I took a look at my clients. I wanted to know where is everybody coming from? Who are they? What do they do? Is there a commonality? And that's where I saw that it was mostly attorneys. So I decided well, if I'm going to do marketing, if I'm going to try to work with a niche this is the one that I want to go to, so I think it kind of found me. I didn't necessarily go out and seek them.
Speaker 2:What did you learn about attorneys that maybe surprise you or makes them different from other? You know occupational leaders. Is there a commonality like there?
Speaker 1:So, like a financial planner advisor, income fluctuates for us also fluctuates for an attorney. You're very busy running your business. You're very busy doing anywhere from 10 to 100 things, and time is very crucial and I know that people in my space time is very crucial and often one of the things that gets left off to the wayside is taking care of your finances. So for me, it's becoming to have that patience of when I meet with someone we start to talk about potentially working together, or some of the things that I might be able to help them with is to go at a pace that's comfortable for them.
Speaker 1:And I have a particular situation I'm working on right now with an attorney. He's doing very, very well. He's gone into his own practice, he's swamped, so we're trying to not tackle four things at the same time. We're trying to move piece by piece, because I want to be respectful of their time, but we also want to move them along in the process. So it's being cognizant of making sure that we don't overwhelm them, because then I know what will happen Nothing will happen.
Speaker 2:Yes, because here's what happens on our end and I mentioned this because I think it's the same thing that can happen to legal clients is that they start to work with a professional and almost right out of the box at least my experiences, and whether it it's a tax person or an estate planning person all of a sudden it's 4,000-page questionnaire they want me to fill out, starting from ground zero, and sometimes, frank, I've said back to them I don't have time for this and tell me what's important. Well, here's the five things out of the 4,000, and I'm exaggerating that are important, all right. Well, that's a bad customer experience, right? Because and lawyers do again, this is occupation agnostic Lawyers can do the same thing with all this automation. Oh, mr Client, go and fill out all these forms about, in our case, your medical history and the doctors and past history and all that stuff, and it's overwhelming, you're right. So how could we both be better? Do you think about not making this initial process of thinking about state planning, financial planning, wealth building so onerous?
Speaker 1:A lot of times it's you know, my initial discovery meeting if we're going to use law, firm terms is just find out about the person. You know, I want to make sure that they like me, I want to make sure that I like them, I want to make sure that we can work together and I think for the most part we can. But it's you know. What are you trying to accomplish, right? What it's? It's an old question and some people like it, some people can't stand it, but you know what keeps you up at night from a financial standpoint. What is it that you're worried about? And kind of get some feedback based on that. You know why does that worry you. How would you feel if we could improve that or make it better or take the worry off your table? And then sometimes it's really just okay.
Speaker 1:Out of the four or five things that you've mentioned, what are the top two that you'd like to handle as soon as possible? And then just work that way and then gradually get into the other things Because, like you said or we've talked already, we don't want to be overwhelming. You know it's a lot of times they'll say well, can you send me a? You know, send me your planning agreement, or can you send me a list of the things that I need to do? And you know, sometimes when I do that it's like, oh my gosh, I don't have time for this. So by finding out what you want to do and what are the couple of hot buttons, then I can just summarize that in an email and this is what I need. Let's start here. I think that just kind of really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause I can remember, you know, as a probably mid twenties right, and being introduced to a insurance guy, and he was young and I eventually became his orphan, like I was orphaned off to somebody else. But he's asking me, like you know, he was young and I eventually became his orphan, like I was orphaned off to somebody else. But he's asking me, like you know, ben, like where do you think inflation will be in 30 years? I'm like dude, like I don't even know, I don't have enough experience, even though what inflation means? Like so what difference? Because he was filling out a form that ultimately was going to get to like the number, like how much do you need by x, number of years, and I'm like that's, that's, that's overwhelming, yeah, and I think that that's a place where um stops a lot of people who are thinking about financial planning.
Speaker 2:This is, this is kind of the scary part is what's your number, what's the number of dollars of assets that if I had that I wouldn't have to work the rest of my life, but I don't know how long I'm going to live and I'm scared to death of increasing costs of medicine and what happens if I need long-term care and all that. And then I know you know this, Like people, what do they do? They just stop thinking about the whole problem. They go on to things that we go on to things that we can solve in the next couple of hours. So walk us through kind of you've alluded to it a little bit kind of the framework when you are onboarding a new client and they do. You've gotten past the do you trust me? Do I make sense? Like, am I an idiot? Yes, no, okay. So we're there and now kind of working with that client and his family, probably in figuring out what are we going to tackle first, give me a framework for that.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things that I want to mention, and I preempt it by saying we're going to have some meetings along the way 30 minutes, 45 minutes because I'm going to need to gather some information. We're going to have to revisit a couple of times. If it's someone that's married you know husband and wife and it doesn't matter who the first person is that I ended up speaking to I want to bring in my business partner, who's a female, because, quite honestly, there has to be a little bit of that connection which sometimes I may or may not have with the woman on the other side. I mean, I think I can get along pretty well with most, but some of them like to know that you know there's a female involved. So by having my business partner as a female involved in our meetings, you know it is a huge help.
Speaker 1:We'll go through some questions. We'll look at what the hot buttons are that need to be fixed or corrected. A lot of times it starts with a financial plan, and a financial plan really is going to allow us to see where you're at currently. Where do you want to be, whether it's a number, or I want to retire at 70. Okay, but then what does retire at 70 really mean you own a firm?
Speaker 2:I'm three years from that question, because that's exactly the question everybody says my son, who I'm in practice with. Well, dad, if we say at 70, three years from now, what does that mean? I think maybe it looks like this, but I'm not really sure and I might get. Whatever I say, frank, I might get tired of in 60 days and want to change direction again.
Speaker 1:Right Like when I first started in the business many years ago. What age do you want to retire? 67. And that was it pretty cut and dry. So we had to, you know, figure out a plan for someone to retire at 67, but now retirement, I want to cut back from my firm. I still want to own it, I want to transition it to my son, my daughter, my partner who's 10 years younger than me, but I still want to consult, or you know what I completely want out.
Speaker 1:So we need to find out what the grand scheme is and then we work on the plan, because the plan is really going to tell us how, whatever it is you currently have, is it right, does it fit? Does everything kind of align together? And we're also going to get your other professionals involved, like your CPA, because I often hear you know, frank, you know I'm looking at ways to minimize my taxes, I'm paying way too much. Do you know of an accountant or a CPA that's more aggressive than the one that I'm using? If I talk to 10 people, I'm probably hearing that at least five or six times.
Speaker 1:So we kind of get into a little bit of nitty-gritty and then work our way towards some of these solutions and then ultimately, we'll bring back okay. So here's your problem. You have a big tax problem, you're making really good money, but you're not maxing out your 401k, as an example. Or we need to go beyond that and put in a cash balance or defined benefit plan, which will significantly save you a lot of money and also allow you to put away a significant amount of money. There's a lot of people, whether you're an attorney or a business owner they don't know about those programs.
Speaker 1:So it's also enlightening them on some of the information that's out there and trying to educate them first, because I feel that when you're educated and I can give you some good information, you'll just make better decisions.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, this is Ben again just butting in here. If you don't already have a copy of my book, renegade Lawyer Marketing, you're really missing an opportunity to help your firm grow. This book is 300 pages of very practical advice for those of us who are running solo and small firms and who are not spending tens of thousands of dollars or $100 million on advertising. At Ben Glass Law, over 80% of our new leads start because a human being has mentioned our name, and in this book, brian and I share the secrets that make this possible. Now you can get the book over at Amazon, but if you do, you're going to miss out on three really terrific bonuses that are only available when you order the book from RenegadeLawyerMarketingcom. Number one you're going to get our ultimate referral letter. This is the exact letter that we've used to drive referrals both from lawyers and other professional practice owners, including healthcare providers in our case, and has helped us accomplish our financial and growth goals. Second, you're going to get our intake success system, because what good is it to drive more cases, to get more leads if you don't have a system and a person and a script for answering the phone when they do call? The Intake Success System is a complete course that will help you and your team convert more leads. And finally, you're going to get the notes from the latest Great Legal Marketing Summit. These are 100 pages of notes and slides from all of the speakers at our last summit. And again, none of these bonuses are available on Amazon. Finally, if you like, after you buy the book, you'll be able to get on a 20 minute strategy call with either Brian or me. What we're really good at is helping you figure out what's the best use of your next dollar and your next hour in building the perfect practice to serve your life. So go over to renegadelawyermarketingcom, pay shipping and handling and order your book today.
Speaker 2:It is very hard, you know, as the non-financial planner person, to kind of wrap your arms around and keep up with an evolving economic and tax regulation landscape, so we'll come back to that in a second. I bet you there's a bias. Going back for a moment to the question what does retirement look like? You are likely dealing with law firm owners, so guys and gals who have built something right. So they're entrepreneurs, and that's probably a different population than someone, maybe, who's worked for corporations and been an employee, and maybe a non-equity employee for all their years 67 and retired might be like heaven on earth For the rest of us.
Speaker 2:We've built stuff the majority of our adult lives and we wake up in the morning building stuff and trying to be creative and it's really hard to imagine like going to zero on that Like I would. I can do it on vacation for like four days and then I'm back like to building something. So I'll bet that that's a? Um an interesting conversation. So I'm curious now how many of your lawyers who quote unquote either retire or cut back from lawyering, have something else Side gig, go help somebody else's business?
Speaker 1:They're still working, it's not just in the legal so, uniquely, most of our clients are under 55 years old. We don't have a lot of people that are close to retirement, which I guess it just kind of evolved that way. But when you talk about ultimately retiring and what else are you going to do, I'll ask them okay, so let's say you want to completely out, you want to sell your practice and someone else takes over and you walk away. What is that going to look like? What are you going to do? For example, it could be someone.
Speaker 1:You don't play tennis, you don't play golf. Now, what Are you going to travel? Okay, that's one thing that could possibly happen. But what are you going to do with all this time? Are you going to volunteer with all this time? Are you going to volunteer?
Speaker 1:I mean, you can only have breakfast with your buddies so many times a week or a month before that gets kind of boring. You need something else to do, and maybe they'll create another opportunity. They'll do consulting, They'll do coaching. It really varies. You and I, Ben, we're not in similar professions at all, but we own our own businesses and we can work as long as we want to, assuming that we're enjoying it and having a good time with it. There's an attorney that I know we're good friends down here in Florida. He was talking about retirement. For three years he finally said okay, I'm done, he's not done, he's sitting second chair on most of the cases. So you know, it's like an athlete when they reach the end and they say they retire, they just miss it so much they have to get back in the game some way somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I imagine it's going to be. It's going to be hard unless you have some other thing that's really a strong magnetic pull for you. Let me talk to a little bit because you mentioned, you know, selling practice and that's a relatively newer phenomena in America and I think it's going to be increasing. You know you have both sort of the rumors and the stories about private equity. You know wanting to buy practices, okay, but more and more there seems to be a market for the sale of these smaller law practice. I don't know whether you have a bunch of experience in that or not yet, because your age cohort is a little bit younger yeah, younger but do you have this experience? Do you have observations or comments about the buying and selling of small law firms?
Speaker 1:I haven't seen it yet because, as you mentioned, my clients are on the little bit of the younger side. I have experienced it with some of my other business owners and their practices. What I've seen more of and I don't mean to go off on a tangent is somebody working for big or bigger law and then going out on their own, grabbing an associate or a colleague or maybe somebody from another firm and they say, hey, look, I'm leaving. Oh great, I'm leaving too. Let's form our own and start from there. I'm seeing a lot of that happening lately, I think over the last couple of years. I think I need both hands to kind of name all the people that have done that.
Speaker 1:I've also seen a practice where a couple of attorneys had their own practice. It was smaller. They joined a bigger firm, a very much bigger firm, for about 18 months. It didn't work out. Then they went back to being their own firm and they're growing from there and that was kind of a tough thing to unwind and obviously I can't talk about it, but I've seen that. But I've seen more people want it. They want to build it for themselves instead of building it for somebody else. That's what I've seen more of, but we also have to make sure that there's some sort of succession plan in place just in case they want to sell or in case something happens to one of the partners.
Speaker 2:That's what we do two of our members um at Alexander, who's down in Orlando, and Jonathan Hawkins is in Georgia are like their niche within a niche really is helping lawyers do what you have just described. Either they're leaving big law and they're setting up their own firm or, in both cases, they're also on the side of hey, how do we position to sell this, whether we're selling to an insider or somebody else, like, how do we start to? You know, when do we start to think about that? Three and four and five years ahead of a date, and what do we do to set it up? So they've been great resources.
Speaker 2:The other thing that we're seeing, of course, now in the Washington DC area in particular and GLM is doing its part here which is government lawyers who are losing their jobs either because of downsizing or because they're former prosecutors and they're being targeted.
Speaker 2:And so for anyone who's listening to this and doesn't already know about the Great Legal Marketing Program we're offering to any lawyer who's in that position, who is interested in starting his or her own law firm, like membership in our tribe for a year, like let's get you started, let's get you the fundamentals. Now, this won't, you know, this won't be for everybody, because some are going to want to go to other firms. But if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're a government lawyer who's being displaced in one way shape or form, thinking about starting your own law firm or getting together, as Frank said, you know the buddy like come talk to us. We'd love to have you as part of the tribe and are willing to help. We've done that for 20 years with military attorneys who are separating from the service and who are coming into private world and starting their own gig.
Speaker 1:That's great. That's great yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we have, you know, we have people raising their hands and coming in. So it's sad, you know it, it's disruption, but we're doing our part. Let's talk for a bit here about taxes, because that's just another complicated world and I'll tell you, frank, I've talked to a number of people. Everybody has different ideas and I've always been of the view like I talk to a wealth planner or a tax, so-called tax expert, and they come up with things I've never heard of and I don't know anything about, and I'm like I can't begin to wrap my arms around, for example, oil and gas leases, like how would I ever be confident in the decision we're making, versus I just go back and get another case and I just keep out running taxes. I just keep increasing wealth by out running taxes. But what are some things that all of us lawyers running practices, frank, should be or could be thinking about in terms of tax mitigation?
Speaker 1:Well, first off, I don't prepare taxes. I don't do returns. I'm not a CPA by any stretch of the imagination, but I collaborate with them when I'm involved on the cases that I work with, and a lot of my referrals to attorneys or business owners will come from those CPAs that I've worked with in the past, sometimes as a client or sometimes because we're sharing business together. I think the very first thing that we tend to look at is what we want to do first off is look at your cash flow. Now, that can be done by me. It can also be done by a fractional or an in-house CFO, but we want to see the money that's coming in. We also want to see the money that's coming in. We also want to see the money that's going out, where you're spending it. You have to have some sort of budget. When I say budget, I don't mean handcuffs. We just want to make sure that we're utilizing these dollars in a smart way. We first look at retirement planning. We look at a tax return. We'll analyze the tax return up to our expertise, but then we're going to get the CPA involved and ask him or her okay, what are you seeing on here? This is what I see what do you see? And we look for places where they're overpaying and how we can reduce those taxes. I'll keep it very minimal, but retirement planning is the first place. I'll keep it very minimal, but retirement planning is the first place.
Speaker 1:A lot of attorneys don't know that you can do something beyond a 401k. You can do a solo 401k and you haven't done it for 2024. We can still squeeze it in there. You can do a defined benefit plan for 2024, as long as you haven't filed your tax return. We're working on two of them right now and that's where some of the major savings come into play and we're looking at, you know, potentially six-figure contributions and if you have the income to do that and it's sustainable, you know $100,000 as an example contribution might save you $25,000, $30,000 a year. Well, multiply that over 10 years, it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:So, and sometimes I'll get the question well, how come my advisor, how come my person never told me about this? You know what? I don't know, I can't answer that question. But here it is, and we try not to make it very complicated, because we don't want it to be complicated, because then I'm sure you know what's going to happen Nothing, there's no decision, yeah, nothing happens. I don't understand it. Right? Sounds like it's too risky. I mean, the government designed it for tax benefit.
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that, if you can utilize it, we want to make sure that we can utilize it. And then also, taking a look at where's your money, how is it invested? Is it tax efficient? We kind of use the three bucket strategy there's taxable, tax deferred and then there's tax free. It's the tax free bucket that most people don't have a lot of money in because they're not aware of, maybe, how it works.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, you always want to have emergency money and you always want to have liquid money. But you need to use both of the other two buckets the tax deferred and the tax free because if you have everything in a tax deferred bucket, all you're really doing is delaying the calculation of the tax and we don't know what the tax is going to be 10, 20, 30 years from now. So if everything is in there, you know that's something that will have to be dealt with down the road and you've accumulated a great sum of money. You think you have $3 million. But do you have $3 million after taxes? Probably not right, or definitely not after taxes. So it's, it's a mindset and it's just education at a pace that you know they understand it, it makes sense and not over complicating it.
Speaker 2:I'll bet you that a lot of lawyers will say some version of cash flow. But but, frank, my business is different and it's really erratic and some version of you don't understand this. You, frank, don't understand my business. What we have found and what we teach at Great Legal Marketing is that the better you get at tracking leads to conversions to clients, to how much time it takes to get paid, to how many leads you need to convert, and the better you get at improving each of those steps along the way, the more predictable income is. And I'll just give you an example.
Speaker 2:So we are a 99.9999% contingent fee law firm and made the commitment several years ago to get better at predicting. So hired consultants, got great technology, learned the technology, maximized the technology, maximize the technology and in 2024, literally came within like two percentage points in each of our verticals personal injury and long-term disability in terms of predicting 13 months ahead where 2024 would end. Now, we haven't always been that good, but we have a really good handle on how much advertising and marketing we need to produce the right number of cases and when those cases will resolve Like. It's very, very doable even in a contingent fee practice doable even in a contingent fee practice. So my question to you is how much of your in working with a law firm client, how much of the information gap is gee? You're not running a very tight business. As a business, we're going to assume they're good lawyers, right. But how much is when you start to look around and you're like you guys really don't know your numbers? And here's all these ways to improve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it happens more often than I think you would imagine, and you know. Whether you call it KPIs or whether you call it metrics, you have to have certain things that you measure. I do too. How many clients do I need to hit a certain number? What is the average revenue from a client? How many calls, how many meetings? All of those things play into the revenue that's being generated, and sometimes it's hard to get that out of them, because it's not that they're embarrassed, but I like to call it that they're getting financially undressed and they're not very comfortable they're naked, yeah.
Speaker 1:The water's gone out and they're naked, yeah you know, and I tell everybody too, I'm not here to judge. I've seen everything. I mean, I've been doing this for 30 years. I've seen the best, I've seen the worst, and in between, whatever we talk about stays with us. I'm never going to explain your situation to anybody else, but in order for me to produce the work that's going to benefit you, I've got to have the details, and without those details it's like garbage in, garbage out. So we really have to get them to focus just a little bit so that they can get proper information. It's the focus part. I think that's out of all of this that we talk about, or anything that I talk about. It's getting them focused.
Speaker 1:I know you're busy. I'm busy too. Thank goodness we're busy. That's great, because if you had all day to sit around and chit-chat with me for a couple hours, well, that's not helping you. Go out and get the business. But we need to make sure that we're setting you up correctly so that we're using your dollars in the most efficient manner possible, so that when you go away, you're not worried about. Well, I need five or six cases to come in so I have something to work on, or I can't worry, my phone is ringing, I need to answer it. That doesn't help. You've got to have an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. When you're making good money, we just want to make sure that it's being used efficiently.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Ben and I just want to butt in here during the podcast to give a shout out to one of our major supporters of the Renegade Lawyer podcast, my good friend, Jonathan Hawkins. Jonathan is a part of our in-person mastermind group but, more importantly, he's the founder of Law Firm GC, which you can find at yourlawfirmgccom, and Jonathan serves as outside general counsel for law firms. His clients are lawyers. He represents lawyers and law firms from formation to dissolution and everything in between. Jonathan helps attorneys and law firm owners identify, understand and navigate the legal, business and ethics-related issues. And you know, you'd think that lawyers would know all this, but they don't. They're so busy running their own practices. They're experts in their own niche and Jonathan is a guy who's going to make sure you don't make any silly mistakes informing your partnerships, dissolving your firm, firing lawyers, hiring lawyers, setting compensation schemes everything that a lot of us never think about until it's way too late.
Speaker 2:We want to thank Jonathan for being a big supporter of the podcast. Invite you to go check him out at yourlawfirmgccom. That's yourlawfirmgccom. Yes, Jonathan will talk to you, no matter where you are in the country. All right, now back to this episode, to this episode. What are you doing these days, Frank, to build your business? I know we were together at Jay's conference. I think you have been at some other conferences and sort of hanging out with law firm owners. But I'm always curious, one small biz owner to another, what are some of the things you do that you find are helpful in growing your practice?
Speaker 1:So I've been very active on LinkedIn and it probably started about 18 months ago and I've met some incredible people. I'm going to do a shout-out to Charlie Mann. I'm going to do a shout out to Charlie Mann. I'm going to shout out to Tony Albrecht a couple of really good people that have helped me kind of establish a bit of a footprint in my niche, in my practice. So it's a lot of LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:I'm part of a local bar association down here in South Florida, so I go to their lunch meetings. I try to make their happy hours. I do a happy hour for attorneys. I'm trying to do one a quarter, so my next one probably is going to be towards the end of April. I have a mastermind group of about 15 or 16 people. We're lawyer heavy. I've already been told not to bring up any more lawyers, but there's probably eight or nine attorneys in there. I went to you know Jeannie's event, which I thought that event was great. No, I'm not an attorney, but I got to meet some people that I've been connected to on LinkedIn, like you, for example, and it was a real honor to meet you and have you sit at our table. So I'm just trying to put myself out there as much as I can, but also learn about some of the things that are problems for you or concerns for you, and that includes listening to podcasts that are done by law firm owners or other attorneys or coaches that coach attorneys.
Speaker 2:It is a really interesting world. There's a lot of you've heard me say there's a lot of I. You've heard me say there's a lot of good rooms out there, people running mastermind groups and coaching programs. I'm curious, the mastermind group that you mentioned, do you all get together live and in person?
Speaker 1:yes, so we started right before covet in like august or september of 2019?
Speaker 1:oh wow yeah yeah, and then COVID hit and I quickly transitioned to virtual meetings, kept us together and then, as things kind of started to unwind a little bit, then I would have the standing virtual meeting, but then two weeks in between that I would say we're going to meet for coffee. If you want to come and you feel safe to come, you can come. Sometimes we'd have six people, sometimes we have six people, sometimes we have eight. So we try to keep it together. But, yeah, once a month we meet for 90 minutes on a Friday and then we also have a social once a quarter too, and then every year around August, september, we have our annual dinner anniversary party.
Speaker 2:That's nice. Yeah, that's really cool. Okay, so last topic, let's talk about the trust issue. It's the same issue that lawyers face when they're trying to convince prospective clients to choose them amongst the four billion lawyers that are out there. What questions should someone who maybe is listening to this, maybe is listening to this what should they be thinking about in terms of figuring out whether you or someone like you is the right guy or gal to help them plan finances?
Speaker 1:Well, we have to deal with trust issues, just like you do, and sometimes financial advisors don't have a very good impression to people. A lot of people have been burned in the past, and you know. I appreciate that and I understand that I'm not a product pusher, so I want to serve the person first. The solution will lead to a product or an item that we can implement. So is your advisor part of a company where they have proprietary products Not that that's bad, but I think you should know that. Are they independent, like myself? And the main difference is that I have the whole world of solutions available to me and, as a fiduciary, we are providing objective advice.
Speaker 1:I treat every client as though I'm in their situation. I don't want a mistake to happen. I put myself in their shoes, almost like Ben. Based on your situation, here's a couple options. This is the one that I would choose.
Speaker 1:Being referred in is always the best way, right, and just because someone has an experience with the advisor that they've worked with and they can tell you a little bit about whether it's Frank or John or Sue or Carol, you know this is how they work. This is what they've done for me. I think you should talk to him. So a referral or an introduction for people in our space is always the best way, much like I'm sure it is for you as well, because it's you know, do I want someone that's gone to the internet and saying financial advisor in my area? You know, I don't. I don't know if that's the best way to look for a financial advisor, and it's. It's a shame if that has to happen. I would hope that a person like that knows someone who's working with a financial advisor and get a good introduction to one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's. That's very much like the legal space. Well, look, this has been wonderful, frank. If people want to reach out to you, where should they go and look and what should they do as a next step?
Speaker 1:So you can find me on LinkedIn, frank Rekus, simple. My email is frank. At palm wealth partnerscom, you want to call me. I'm happy to talk to you 954-253-5508. If you'd like a free consult, free consultation, a free discovery meeting to use uh, you know the legal word I'm happy to do that. We'll give anybody you know 20, 30 minutes for ask Frank, anything kind of thing. If we're able to help you, great. If we're able to give you that second opinion that says you know what you're, okay. I'm going to tell you that too. I'm not going to disrupt anything that you've already done. That's been good, but if I find something, I'm going to let you know about it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well look, thanks so much for carving out some time in this Friday afternoon. I look forward to staying in contact with you, watching your stuff on LinkedIn, and I'm sure that we'll be in another conference together at some point.
Speaker 1:I sure hope so. Thanks for having me, Ben. I really appreciate it Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, do me a favor, subscribe, leave a review and share this with a fellow lawyer who needs to hear it For more powerful strategies on marketing practice, growth and taking control of your legal career. Head over to greatlegalmarketingcom. You can also find us on LinkedIn Search for Great Legal Marketing and Benjamin Glass to connect. Stay tuned.
