472. AMMA - The Truth About Operations and the People Who Run Them

Speaker A: Depending on where you are in the business, especially when you're starting out, you can't just say, uh, I'm a visionary, so we're not going to do all the things that the business needs because I'm a visionary. The work still has to get done. I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Krisp, the nation's number one law firm growth company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Krisp started with just $500 to my name and has grown to over eight figures in revenue over the last few years, earning a spot on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast, I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo, and define what it means to be a true game changer.

Speaker B: This is Jessica, head of coaching strategy at Crisp. And today we're flipping the script for another special edition episode to get Michael's take on how to identify whether a struggle with daily operations is a discipline problem or a natural trait. Moving past a revenue plateau when your instinct is to refine rather than reinvent. And how to resolve communication breakdowns between visionary and integrator roles within your firm.

Speaker A: We see partnerships where they have completely different set of values. You see ones that have a completely different set of political beliefs. One's a Republican, one's a Democrat, but they still work together in the firm. So it's absolutely possible to be able to have a different set of values and still be great partners.

Speaker B: That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. All right, here we are. Another amma.

Speaker A: It seems like we just did one.

Speaker B: We probably did just do one. Um, I love the summer, though. You know, why was that? Kids are at different camps every week. And the tales. The tales from the camps.

Speaker A: Yeah. This is whole, like, whole logistical process that you've enlightened me on, on what these kids like every minute of their day, what they're doing. Like, you can't just. I mean, back in. Back in my day, back in our day, like, there was. Summer was not. We're going to sign you up for 18 different activities, and you're going to have all sorts of things to do. It was go outside, go outside, you know, and then do whatever the hell you want. And just.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Like, you have to call another house, like your friend's house to check in to see if you were there on the landline. Right. Because we didn't have, you know, we didn't have, like, cell phones. Uh, or it would just be like, we're going to work. See you later.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you just be home all day.

Speaker B: Yeah. I don't. Yeah, they're not quite there yet to be home all day on their own.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think still a little young for that.

Speaker A: If they were home all day. Yeah. Five year old and seven year old. But that's. That's. That's how I grew up.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. I mean, we were building things. We take the mattresses off the beds. You know, we create, like, these forts. We'd ride them down the stairs. It was wild. Like, it was totally. I mean, you have no business leaving a child that young at home by herself. But, um, that's just the. That's the way it was then. It wasn't uncommon by.

Speaker B: Yes. Oh, no.

Speaker A: But back to. Back to you in the sense that,

Speaker B: you know, it's a logistical nightmare. Tell.

Speaker A: Tell them what happened this week.

Speaker B: Yes. So this week I decided I'm gonna put the girls in the same camp together. So they're going to swim camp, and it happens to be where you swim. So I'm like, this is a familiar place, blah, blah, blah. And things are going well. So then I go pick up and I'm like, how's everything going? Talking to the coach, everything. And if you've been listening, you know, our children are two very, very different children and the descriptors that he used. So we have Mila, the older, Misha the younger. And he's like, mila, this one, she is the epitome of a big sister. She is such a rule follower. She's always taking care of her little sister. She is just such a good listener. And this one, she's funny. And that's all he had to say. And I was like, could you elaborate just a little bit? And he's like, she's not even trying to be funny. She's just, um. She's just funny. And I was like, okay, well, is she listening? Not so much. Yeah.

Speaker A: She's the only kid out of five kids who got put in timeout.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: All week.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: It's amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah. You seem to be so baffled by this. You are the risk taker. You are the one that pushes the envelope.

Speaker A: I understand her.

Speaker B: Right. And then you're like, oh, she's going to be a Problem.

Speaker A: I say she's going to be the problem, but we're not going to have to worry about her.

Speaker B: Yes, there you go.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, she's the one. You come home, uh, I remember even this morning after swimming, you come home, it's like what, 7, 7am and these kids are flying around the living room, like literally on these scooters, just zooming like Misha's. M got her legs up and she's just like flying around couches. Just. It's like top speed. Top speed.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: You know, she got her shoes on like, you know, the left shoes on the right foot and vice versa. Uh, sometimes she'll wear like different socks cuz she wants a mismatch.

Speaker B: Mismatch. Uh, yes, sometimes different shoes.

Speaker A: One night I was putting her to bed. This cracked me up because M likes to take her socks off when she goes to bed and she like, she just has to make sure both socks are off. Misha, one night was like one sock on, one sock off. I was like, what the hell?

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I'm like, are you sure? She's like, yeah, I want one on and then one off. And then her favorite plush, you know, stuffy. Stuffy, right. You're gonna love this. I mean, you know, but the people listening could be anything, right? Some kids have like, our oldest has like this unicorn, rainbows.

Speaker B: All of.

Speaker A: Yeah, rainbows. Or like, you know, some sort of like stuffed animal. Like just something like that. Our youngest, her favorite stuffy is. Is an emoji. It's a. Ah, it's an emoji. Like if you, if you type with emojis on your phone. Yeah, it is. The, uh, poop emoji.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is her favorite.

Speaker B: That's her favorite stuff. It's her favorite thing in life right now, if I'm being honest. Um, at bedtime, she wants to open Amazon and she wants me to type in poop emoji to see what all could be purchased in the poop emoji.

Speaker A: I mean, two. Two examples of this. I was walking down the stairs this past weekend and she wouldn't let me pass. She said, what's the password? I said, oh, uh, man, I don't know. What is the password? And then she, she whispers to me, she says, the password is poop. She starts cracking up. I'm like, okay. Also, she's the other child that got, uh, in trouble in class for, uh, uh, saying the word booty cheeks.

Speaker B: Yeah. Where'd she learn that, Michael?

Speaker A: Um, I don't know. Yeah, so. So anyway, it's um, gonna be a lot of fun. Five years old.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, it's been, uh, it's been a. You know, it's been a fun ride so far. We're excited for many years to come.

Speaker B: Um, there's just one Misha.

Speaker A: That's. That's right. We say she's one of one.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, there's. There's just one of her. There's no. No duplicating her.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Um, but. All right, let's. Let's get to it. Jessica. I know. This is the amma. You guys submit your questions. You can text us at 404-531-7691. Jessica compiles the questions. And this is one of three episodes that we do on this podcast. We've got our traditional interviews where we bring on a guest from the legal industry and beyond. We've had some awesome guests on kind of like the Human Performance series, if you. Some of the last few guests and some of the ones we have coming up are absolutely incredible. Uh, ones that we've been working on for. For months and some even years. And then outside of that, we've got the encore editions where we bring back some of our most popular episodes. We are well on our way to, uh, to reaching 500 podcast episodes, which is crazy when you think about it, because we had a. A workshop yesterday, and someone's like, I just started my podcast, and I'm like, how many episodes you in? He's like, 10.

Speaker B: I'm like, oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Like, keep going. Yeah, keep going, right? He's like, uh, oh, you know, you know, what did it take to hit 500? I'm like, well, you know, I'll tell you when I get there, but this is the ama. And, uh, one thing you'll notice is we don't run any ads on this podcast. So if you get any sort of value from, uh, from this episode or any other episode, all that we ask is that you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And with that, Jessica, what do we have this week?

Speaker B: All right, kicking us off with question number one. Michael, I want to get your take on something I've been avoiding admitting for a while. I started my firm eight years ago, and I've always told myself I'm both the big picture thinker and the person who makes sure things actually get done. But the longer I run this business, the more I'm starting to suspect that's not really true. I'm genuinely energized by strategy, new ideas, and where we're going. But the operational side of the business exhausts me in a way I can't seem to push through no matter how hard I try. I've been treating it as a discipline problem, but I'm starting to wonder if I've just been fighting my own nature this whole time. How do you figure out which one you actually are? And as a business owner, do I need to just suck it up and find a way to be both?

Speaker A: Okay, so really a two part question?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: There's this common dynamic, it was popularized by Gino Wickman and Rocket Fuel where he talks about like the visionary and then the integrator. Right. The visionary is kind of like the idea person. A lot of times it's the founder. Not always. And then the integrator is the one who makes all the trains run on time, does the operations kind of the, the back of house, sometimes the front of house, and is the glue behind taking these ideas from vision to reality. It's kind of like Walt Disney and then Roy Disney. But that's not always true. And I, and I think it's, it's not always such a black and white answer of saying I'm a visionary or I'm an integrator. And, and I, I hate the word visionary as well because I think it grandizes people too much. Um, but that being said, how do you figure out which one you are? I think, I think you already know. I mean it's, it's essentially um, which, you know, which aspect of the business feels less like work to you?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And which one gives you more energy, you know. So for example, somebody who is a visionary loves ideation. They love being able to think about just strategy. They love the vision aspects of the business. Typically they enjoy sales, they enjoy relationship building, maybe they enjoy marketing. Somebody who's more of an integrator likes, uh, systems, processes, operations, um, SOPs, like, you know, just KPIs, those sorts of things. And if you're more of an integrator, chances are like ideation may not be the thing that gives you energy. It's not to say you can't do either one. Which is really lends us to the second part of the question of do I just suck it up? And the answer is depending on where you are in the business. Ah, especially when you're starting out. Yes, you suck it up. You can't just say, I mean, you know, starting the business like I'm a visionary, so we're not going to do all the things that the business needs, uh, because I'm A visionary.

Speaker B: Right, Right.

Speaker A: I mean the work still has to get done. I do think it's, it is a privilege later on to be able to focus on the activities that are your strengths and the ones that give you energy. But it can take some time to be able to get there because you have to expand your capacity and find and hire people who compliment your, you know, your strengths and who your weaknesses are, their strengths and vice versa. Yeah, right. But yeah, sometimes you got to suck it up. I mean the business still needs to run. I mean even ah, early on in the business, I'm not a huge process person, but we had to start documenting things and writing processes down and it required a tremendous amount of energy. For me, I didn't love, it was like nails on a chalkboard, but it still had to get done. The same thing with um, any sort of like key performance metrics, KPIs, data dashboards, et cetera, all that stuff. You can't just do all the things you enjoy doing, especially early on. It is a privilege. But you should work towards that because I believe that if you can get to a place where the majority of your time and energy is spent doing the types of activities that you enjoy and are good at, well then you're going to want to keep doing that sort of thing. Right. It's good for your longevity, especially in your business. So if you could take away all the activities that you dread and focus on the things that energize you, then why would you ever do anything else?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: That's kind of the goal of life. Like you want to live a happy, fulfilled life, then figure out all the things that are things that you're not good at or don't enjoy doing and figure out a way for you to not have to get those. Do those things, but those things still get done. Kind of a long winded answer. Yes. If there's nobody else to do those things at the moment, then yes, you got to suck it up and get it done. But you should work towards getting to a place where the business is able to like the activities that you're doing for the most part, I would say at least 80%, maybe even 90%.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: You want to talk about in levels of satisfaction that you get to a place where the things you're doing give you energy.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But there's still going to be things that you don't enjoy. It's just a part of life.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Right. So I don't, I don't think you should look at it as just this, like this utopia. So I hope that answers the question.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker A: Hey, this is Michael. If you own a law firm right now, you already know the industry is changing fast. Competition is getting tougher. Client expectations are rising. AI and automation are changing the way legal businesses operate. And the firms that win over the next decade will not be the firms with the loudest marketing. They'll be the firms that are operationally disciplined, financially strong, and built to adapt. That's exactly why we created the Million Dollar Day. For years on this podcast, I've talked about what separates firms that grow from firms that stall out. Most of the time, it has very little to do with tactics and everything to do with leadership, hiring, accountability, operational structure, and building a business that can scale without you. Million Dollar Day is your opportunity to take those ideas out of theory and turn them into strategy and execution inside your own firm. On July 29, at Crisp headquarters in Atlanta, I'm bringing together a small group of ambitious law firm owners for a private one day intensive focused on what it actually takes to build a law firm that thrives in this next era. I'll be working directly with firm owners on leadership, team performance, scalability, AI, private equity, and how to position your firm to stay competitive as the legal industry continues to evolve. If you're serious about building a stronger business for the future, you should apply. We only have a handful of spots remaining, so if you'd like to join us, uh, request your invitation today. To learn more and request an invitation, go to crisp Million Dollar Day.com. that's crisp Million Dollar Day. Com.

Speaker B: Question number two. Hey, Michael. Been listening for years. I've been at 4 million in revenue for three years running. Not declining, just completely flat. The frustrating part, that everything in my firm works. Our intake is tight, our systems are solid, our team knows exactly what they're supposed to do, and they do it well. Every time I try to grow, I, uh, default to optimizing something that's already working. Tweaking the intake process, refining our case management system, tightening up our reporting. I execute all of it perfectly and nothing moves. I'm starting to wonder if the problem isn't the business, it's that I'm only capable of improving what already exists rather than creating something genuinely new. How do you grow a business when your instinct is always to refine rather than reinvent?

Speaker A: You know, we did a workshop on this a, uh, couple years ago when we talked about growth versus scale. And it's, you know, businesses go through cycles to where, you know, the growth is where you're pushing Really a lot of sales and revenue generating activities, marketing, et cetera. Like things that are long game, right? A lot of campaigns that you run, branding efforts, things like that, um, that really help to increase top line. Whereas scale is where you're focusing heavily on like efficiency within the business, operationalizing things. How do we improve conversion rates, how do we essentially improve profitability and efficiency, you know, things like that. But it sounds like they've done a pretty good job of creating a pretty efficient business and trying to really figure out how do we become very, very efficient. But there comes a point where you can only squeeze so much out of a small business and it is time to make it a bigger business. So I give this analogy. There's um, uh, what was like the most dangerous catch. I used to love watching the show about these like snow crab fishermen. And when they drop these nets in the water, right, and they like pull up all these, like all these crabs. Uh, but the challenge is that if you keep dropping the nets in the water and you don't let enough crabs swim in, like then every time you pull them up, you're not gonna get a whole lot of crabs, right? So I look at that somewhat, uh, analogous to this in the sense that, you know, you have to have, you know, enough inefficiency to create efficiency. There's only, there comes a point we can only shave off so many pennies and, you know, nickels in so many places. So to me this sounds like you've done a pretty good job on the efficiency side. Maybe there's more you can do. But even so, like, I'd weigh the cost of that of saying, okay, if we were 10% more efficient, that, that's wonderful. Usually firms have the opposite problem. Like they're completely inefficient. I give you credit for that. But it might be time now to focus on, okay, what are the things we need to do to really like 2x3x, really grow and scale the business? How do we really, um. Whether it's some sort of market expansion, whether it's focusing on, uh, some new positioning, whether it's scaling up ad spend, whether it's community or grassroots efforts, something that can get the phone ringing and really start to um, to scale the organization. Like, what would it look like? I believe this person mentioned they're at 4 million. Okay, so what would 10 million look like? What would need to be true? So, and a lot of times it's just flip the switch and it happens immediately. Sometimes the path from 4 million to 10 million involves, uh, um, you know, investments you're going to make today that may not pay off for years to come. So look at what that looks like. So we were building, I remember even just infrastructure for years and years. Even if this, you know, the CRISP headquarters now. Yeah, the CRISP training center. I mean 50,000 square feet. We were building this infrastructure. We made a $20 million investment back in what, March of 2020. Um, and we invested heavily in this space. It was almost a year long construction project. And we're building a lot of infrastructure for what would house not, uh, just our team, but all of our workshops.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And now we conduct, I think over 60 or 70 workshops every single year. Right. We have hundreds if not thousands of uh, firm owners and their teams coming through. I mean just, I think these this week and, and next we have what, like six workshops? Something like that?

Speaker B: Six or seven.

Speaker A: Yeah, six. Seven. Uh, that's right. So, but that took some time. And by the way, if we didn't build out this infrastructure, this is part of like a scaling initiative, or rather a growth initiative. Excuse me, then we wouldn't be able to uh, house that increase in volume. Right. There wouldn't be a place to put them.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I mean you could rent out hotels and ballrooms, but we wouldn't have any control in terms of like the date that we could, uh, you know, do those workshops. We'd have to base it on what availabilities were. We couldn't control the experience, everything down to catering and so on. That took some time. So I would, I would suggest thinking about what would it take to go from 4 million to 10 million, working backwards in that, starting to put those pieces in place now. And instead of being as concerned in terms of how do I become maximally efficient. Right. Sometimes you have to be very inefficient for a certain period of time before you can then focus on efficiency. And this is also true early on in the business. I remember very early on we were just growing and doubling year over year over year over year that we didn't start focusing on certain efficiencies. Like, I mean even we, we were doing travel, for example, we were booking flights. And it used to be that you could book a flight out, you know, as, as short as like a day out. And we realized, well, that's very expensive. So we created policies around booking flights out. I think what a couple weeks out, minimum, you know, costs started to go down. We started standardizing agreements between hotels and rental cars and things like that. We'd started to do a lot of like group buying, et cetera. But all that didn't happen. If, uh, we focused on that, that was like the focus of the business early on.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Then I think we would have been too focused on. On efficiency. And instead of innovating and focusing on the top line.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which it sounds like this person needs to do.

Speaker B: Yeah. All right, to close this out with question number three, Michael. There's something that's been keeping me up at night. My business partner and I have been running our firm together for nine years. And for most of that time, we complimented each other perfectly. He's always been the one with the big ideas, and I've always been the one who figures out how to actually make things work. For a long time, that balance made us really effective. But something has shifted in the last year, and it's starting to affect everything. He thinks I'm too cautious and that I'm slowing us down. I think he's moving too fast and making promises we can't deliver on. Every conversation about the direction of the firm turns into the same argument, and neither of us is budging. We felt something genuinely great together, and I don't want to blow that up. But I also don't know how to get back to a place where our differences feel like a strength instead of a constant source of friction. What would you do? You would not have a partner.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, exactly. That's. That's one. That's one universe. But in this scenario, I would sit down and have a candid conversation. I mean, somehow you guys made it nine years. So, uh, what's happening now that's creating a friction in personalities? Right. One person is more cautious and potentially risk averse. Another one's focusing on, like, pushing ahead and maybe being, you know, I wouldn't say reckless, but certainly, like, maybe innovative.

Speaker B: Innovative. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, yeah. I mean, you guys got to work that out. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, sometimes I've seen in organizations where, uh, they'll do like, uh, you know, a racy chart where it's basically like responsibility, accountability, informed.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And consult, consult, something like that. But it's just, it's basically, it's like a division of, like, who is going to be able to make what type of decisions, being very clear and like, delineating that and having it be very objective.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Right. That's one thing. The other piece is just, is just recognizing that, like, you two may be coming, uh, at a different stage of life where your values may have changed from the time you started the firm. Right. When you start the firm, you're kind of like, I don't know if their situation, they were bootstrapping or not, but you're coming up from ground zero, right? And you, you guys are taking a lot of risks and placing a lot of bets. And because again, you're, you're coming from nothing. And now maybe nine years in, you built something solid. And someone, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if one partner just doesn't want to, um, take as much risk anymore.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because there's more to lose now.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And maybe they want more stability. We see this affirms all the time. Sometimes there's. One partner wants to push ahead and they want to double the size of the firm. Another partner wants to kind of sit back and relax a little bit, enjoy their time with their family. And that's very, you know, that creates a lot of friction because it builds up resentment as well. Because one wants to move in one direction, the other one wants to kind of, you know, stay in place, move in the other direction. And who was right? I mean, it depends, right, from, from each, you know, from each side. Uh, you could argue that there's different values at play, and that's really what it is. I don't know. There's so much like a right answer as to what you should do. I think it's more so a misalignment in values. Uh, but there's a way to bridge the gap. And I think it starts, if you guys are partners, you should sit down and have a candid conversation with the goal of resolution. It doesn't mean the goal of, like, here we're going to grow the firm and not grow the firm. It should be the goal of how can we work together to be able to make decisions, Some decisions. I mean, we see this internally. Even with our executive leadership team. We don't always agree.

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker A: But we do align. There's a big difference between that because you can disagree and commit. There's going to be times where we all agree. You know, that happens probably most of the time, but then there's times where certain people disagree. It's not unanimous. Um, but we still move forward because we can't possibly all agree with every single decision that's being made. If that were happening, then people would just be very dishonest, quite frankly. Like, you just wouldn't be getting candid feedback. Um, sometimes I disagree. And we still move forward. I think it's just understanding, like, you know, and having this candid conversation of how do we? How can we work together? Because the goal should be we as a firm should be able to make decisions as quickly as possible with the least amount of friction. That doesn't mean the decision's going to be in my favor or in your favor or every single time. But we need to be able to have a way to make decisions. Because what I see at most firms are these stalemates, and that's even worse. The stalemates are worse because they feel like no decision is made. And that's actually a setback. To most firms, no decision is a decision.

Speaker B: Yes. So it also caution, if you're not aligned, like, what effect is that having on the team and that whole cascading ripple, Are you even presenting as a united front? Do they know you've got to get aligned at the top?

Speaker A: Correct, correct. And. But I will say it's absolutely workable. We see, uh, partnerships where they have a completely different set of values. You see ones that have a completely different set of political beliefs.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: One's a Republican, one's a Democrat, but they still work together in the firm. So it's absolutely possible to be able to have a different set of values and still be, be great partners. But the main thing to figure out is how can we work together and how can we reduce friction behind our decision making?

Speaker B: Yep. All right, that's it for this one.

Speaker A: Cool. Until next time.

Speaker B: You've been listening to the Game Changing Attorney podcast with Michael Mogul. If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that we can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of Michael's book absolutely free@gamechangingattorney.com. number two, you can shoot Michael a text at 404-531-7691 and ask him any question you'd like. You might just hear the answer on the next episode. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five star review, it will help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on this episode, see the show notes in your podcast app or visit legalpodcast.com.