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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
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
Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Audio Book) – Chapter 11: Time Management for Real Life Lawyers
This is Chapter 11 of the free audio edition of Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Second Edition)—only on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast.
In this chapter, Ben Glass shares the time management strategies that helped him build two businesses, raise nine kids, stay married for 44 years, and still find time to ride his bike and referee soccer games.
You’ll learn:
- Why “no unplanned phone calls” is a rule, not a suggestion
- What time blocking looks like inside BenGlassLaw
- Why 90-minute meetings save time (yes, really)
- The dangers of jerks and the beauty of lunch with a purpose
- Plus, the most important mindset shift: stop guessing, start tracking
📖 This chapter also features principles from the book Ben co-authored with Dan Kennedy:
👉 No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs (2024 Edition) — grab it on Amazon.
📣 Shout-out: Huge thanks to Dan Kennedy, Ben’s longtime mentor and co-author, and the keynote speaker at this year’s GLMSummit.com. Come hear Dan live this October—one of your last chances to see him in person!
📘 Get the book + bonuses at RenegadeLawyerMarketing.com
🎧 Subscribe & review on Apple or Spotify
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.
Hey everyone, welcome back. This is Ben Glass. This is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast and this is another episode in making my book Great Legal Marketing, the audio version available to you for free, and this week, this episode, one of my favorite chapters, time management is something I've become relatively famous for and a lot of ideas in this and in fact, as you'll see, dan Kennedy and I have authored a book no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs. So let's get into Chapter 11, time Management, and this is again. This is in the mindset section of the book. Another aspect of mindset is how you think about, plan and go about using your time. Now Dan Kennedy and I have co-authored no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs. Make sure you go on Amazon. You get the fourth edition and the original version of that book changed my life and, as are reported results to Dan, he invited me to co-author the 2024 edition. Of course you should go and get the book, but while you're waiting to have it delivered by Amazon, let me share some of the strategies that have helped me run two businesses while raising nine children and staying very happily married. In fact, as I record this, we are 44 years this month, so next week will be our 44th anniversary. Sandy and I, all right, renegade pro-lawyer tip. Adapt and leverage time hacks. You know if you work best early in the day or later when everyone else has gone home, if people tend to interrupt you or let you work in peace, if working lunches work for you or not. Read that book again no BS Time Management for a real drill down into each strategy. Then adapt the following hacks to win your time back no unplanned inbound phone calls. It doesn't happen if it's not scheduled in advance. My team said impossible when I told them about this over 20 years ago when I read the first edition of the book. But now I've been doing it for over 20 years. So that means exactly what it sounds like. You don't get on the phone with me unless it is pre-planned. Lots of good reasons for doing it. This has been a huge client satisfaction gainer, if that's the right way to say that for us, because everybody comes prepared to the call.
Speaker 1:Number two no law office meetings or calls before X o'clock. Again, depends on what is the best rhythm for your day. From X o'clock to Y o'clock is the only time for your meeting. X o'clock to Y o'clock is the only time for your meeting. So for me, nothing is scheduled into my calendar before noon except for the call with my executive assistant who is in the Philippines, but no other planned meetings, phone calls or anything. That's my time. It's reading, writing, studying, making plans, doing things like that and it's inviolate. It's blocked out on my calendar. Nobody can override it. You gotta have a morning or afternoon work routine. Again, when is your quiet time? When do you block off? For me, mornings are best for this and I try to do high cognitive in the morning. Number four block time on your calendar for every planned activity. It is called the concept of time blocking, and if you can't find a block, if you've got a whole list of things to do and you can't block it out on your electronic calendar, then you're never going to be able to block it out and find time for it in real life, and so you need to eliminate things, and this is when you start to get good at delegating or, as I have done, you find a wonderful executive assistant who takes care of almost everything. That isn't high cognitive casework or high cognitive business building in my case.
Speaker 1:Number five brief weekly team meetings. Ours are 90 minutes. We follow the EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System and the book is Traction or Get a Grip. Read either one of those books. You'll figure out what that is. A good planned meeting will save you time later. I thought it would be crazy stupid to have 90-minute meetings. So we have a 90-minute leadership meeting for the firm a 90-minute. I run a 90-minute leadership meeting for the long-term disability department and I thought, oh my gosh, there's way too many meetings. It has saved us and brought me back hours and hours and hours each week recovering from the chaos.
Speaker 1:Number six grow leaders, or else you'll never be able to scale yourself or scale beyond yourself. That's true. Look, I've had people leave me to compete against me. I've had people leave me to go on to bigger and better things. Entrepreneurs, we have two choices. One we can take someone and never teach them, never give them opportunity, and in five years they'll be exactly the same person they were when they began, and to me that's no good. Or you can give them the skills, the training, give them access to everything that you have and, yes, they may go and compete with you. That is the way of the world. It is oftentimes sad when it happens, but actually only for a few moments.
Speaker 1:Number seven refuse to deal with jerks. They don't deserve a good person like you. That includes vendors, that includes clients and potential clients. And you know what, when you have adversaries who are jerks and I've run into a few in my life you figure out a way to take the high road, and I've run into a few in my life. You figure out a way to take the high road. Be the one that whenever you're writing something like if a judge, a federal or state court judge, read it like they would be proud that you were part of their profession. That's the way I choose to live. That, but we don't deal with jerks I kick you out of my life.
Speaker 1:And number eight lunch meetings with a purpose. Yeah, lunch meetings for me are like you come to my place and you stop at the restaurant on the way. You bring a sandwich or a salad. I don't spend a lot of time driving to lunches meeting waiting for other people to do that. That's. That's just too much a waste of my time and energy. So come to my place and you bring the food and I'll be happy to sit down and chat with you.
Speaker 1:Number nine no business while driving. This is almost too stupid to imagine especially for those of you who are automobile accident attorneys as we are like texting and driving, talking and driving. Forget it. That's your time, keep it, steal it for yourself.
Speaker 1:Number 10, do email only twice a day. This is a hard one because it's easy to get sucked back in, but today, you know, I have a very limited number of emails that actually make their way to my inbox because I have an executive assistant who clears them for me, and she has learned what is valuable and what is not valuable. She has learned what she can respond to in my voice or on my behalf and what she cannot. But train yourself to really only dig into email twice a day. And here's what I found out when I go to conferences to speak or to attend, and I only have a few minutes at the beginning of each day, I can actually do a whole day's work in about 15 minutes. So that's kind of scary, but it also teaches you that we don't really need to be checking email every five minutes. Anyway, by implementing these time management hacks, I've gained better control of my schedule, allowing me to be more productive and maintain a work-life balance. These strategies have helped me significantly and I hope they can benefit you as well. Again, go and get the book that Kennedy and I wrote and, of course, of course, of course, sign up for our summit, glmsummitcom, this October at Dulles Airport here in Northern Virginia.
Speaker 1:The best way to spend your next hour. Well, when speaking to prospective members of Great Legal Marketing about what makes us different from other coaching and marketing organizations, I often say our superpower is helping lawyers like you decide the most efficient use of their next dollar or hour they want to invest in their practice. This is marketing 101. I tell them the result we can achieve, making the decision as to where to invest work or money, capital, but not how we are going to do that. I want to remind you now of the how.
Speaker 1:Number one the relentless pursuit of accurate facts. Your next hour must always be spent in the relentless pursuit of accurate facts. For a law firm owner, all power is in discovering the facts of reality. If you litigate cases, you already know this. It's why you engage in discovery. As law firm owners, we have to know where we are before we can effect change. Are we happy with where we are? If not, what is the true source of the unhappiness? Are we sure this is the true source? Is there an underlying cause? This is a call out. Everyone should have a coach or a business coach or a mentor of some sort. I've had one for over 20 years or so almost 20 years Sammy Chong out of Toronto.
Speaker 1:Next section facts versus opinions. Opinions are easy to come by, but facts trump opinions every time. My opinion that spending money on local service ads is a good idea, for example, can't ever make it. So I can only get to facts by developing hypotheses, taking action and measuring results. This is no big secret. Much of Napoleon Hill's the Law of Success begins with accurately identifying facts. He called getting the facts right a moral obligation. Ayn Rand called truth the product of the identification of the facts of reality. I'm a huge Ayn Rand fan. If you are not and you want to disagree with me, don't come unprepared. Most people who have something not nice to say about Ayn Rand have never read any of the literature, studied any of the secondary work, attended any courses or can even quote anything. So go explore Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker 1:Next, industry norms. Most industry norms are based on tradition and not facts. Even then, what people remember about how we do things around here isn't always fact-based. Facts are stubborn things. The challenge for most people is that doing the work to discover facts is actually hard. The problem is compounded when the facts aren't pretty and it becomes easier to ignore them than to do the work necessary to change them. Nothing great can ever come from failing to search for facts or ignoring them when you do find them.
Speaker 1:You want to start with facts that matter. Spend the next hour figuring out your answers to the following items. It's a good idea to stop. Do it now, so write down this list, come back, think about this. What is the value of a client? What is your actual cost of acquiring a client? What is your cost for each media or non-media source that is producing clients? What is the quality of clients coming from each media source? What is the true cost of an employee? What is the true production of an employee? What is the time from the opening of a case to getting paid on a case? What is the time for each of the common procedural steps in the cases that you handle, and what is the value of particular referral sources, lawyers and non-lawyers.
Speaker 1:Here's the good news you don't have to be the one to discover the facts. You only have to know which facts. You need to be a master of and trust the person or the system that is producing the facts for you. All right, next time chapter 12, we're going to talk about the unique selling proposition, or what would your community lose if your law firm ceased to exist? As always, give us a like, leave a comment, tell us others about this podcast, the Renegade Lawyer podcast. We hope to see you in October and certainly I want to see you back for Chapter 12.
