141: 10 Golden Rules for Running Your Law Firm Like a Business with Bianca Moreiras and Jay Berkowitz

Networking is more like mining, because if

you're not networking, you're not working. So it's part of the

work day. So whether it's a coffee, a breakfast, a lunch, a

cocktail, a dinner, or just a pure networking event, it's

something that should be on your calendar every single day. I

promise you your business will grow by 20% can't guarantee it.

My I will promise you it will grow by at least 20%

I love that, so I call it rain making. And

there's, again, there's, if you really want to delve deep in

this, we've had two rain making webinars, and they're on our

YouTube channel, the 10 golden rules YouTube channel. But you

know, some of the things that I think are super important in

this category is that referrals are such a huge part of

business. Every business and every law firm will tell you

their best cases or most of their cases come from referrals,

either from referring attorneys, past clients, referring

strategic business partners, professional services. Well,

good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time

you're listening to this podcast. Welcome to the 10

golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast.

We've got a great guest today, and if you're a regular, thank

you for coming back. If you're a newbie and you like the show,

don't forget to subscribe. If you're watching on iTunes, or if

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Spotify, definitely subscribe to the show so we can get you back

again when we have great guests. And guess what? We have amazing

guests every single week, and this week, we've got a really

interesting guest and strategy, because Bianca maras and myself

are going to share with you the top 10 list for running your law

firm, the 10 golden rules for running your law firm. Bianca,

welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law

firms podcast. Thank

you, Jay. I'm so glad to have made this

podcast

Awesome. Well, great to have you now. Bianca

and I go way back, I don't know, five or 10 years, we probably

could figure it out if we tried, but we definitely met at FLN,

the Florida lawyers network. Shout out to Mo, who also has a

great podcast, or we met at some other networking groups or some

conferences, but Bianca is like a superstar rock star. We've

done a bunch of things together. We've chaired meetings,

together, done networking groups, and we've she's helped

recently, helped out one of our clients. I'm really thrilled to

have Bianca, but her company is called Bianca marreris and

Associates. Did you hire a brand new company to come up with

that? No, just kidding, So Josh, but Bianca is really, really

great at helping you run your law firm. And so today, we're

going to give you some super practical tips and strategies.

Bianca, why don't you tell us a little bit about your

background, your journey and how you got in. You got into the

legal business a long time ago. So tell us about your journey.

Awesome. Thank you for that question. Jay,

well, this I am going into my fourth decade in the legal

space, 20 years in my own business, in business consulting

and coaching for law firms. And I just love what I do. I'm

passionate about what I do. Some people laugh. How did you last

with attorneys for so long? I love them. They're smart,

they're full of wisdom. And the best part for me is sometimes

they don't get business. What it's about and where you can go.

I started off cutting my teeth as an administrator, moved into

a marketing executive director position, and then I put on my

wings and took off all of my own and here I am today.

By the way, a lot of people make lawyer jokes, or

think there's a lot of lawyer jokes, but I think that

propaganda spread by the insurance companies and the

people that fence firms, because I've been in three car

accidents, unfortunately, and I needed a lawyer for two out of

the three of them, or they wouldn't have fixed my car. They

wouldn't have paid for my medical I think that lawyers get

a bad rap, and most of them are great guys. We have a niche

marketing agency. We only work with lawyers. And one of the

things I tell people when they're considering picking a

niche is go to a conference and spend like, three days with the

people who are going to be in your niche, because I like

hanging out with lawyers. I mean, generally, they're

educated, they're smart guys, they're funny. They're well to

do. But some of my friends in in my mastermind, they like wearing

ball caps and shorts. Well, that's not what the lawyers

wear. And so they're more comfortable working with home

service industry, and they're much more comfortable at that

conference. So personally, I like hanging out with lawyers.

Call me crazy, and I think it's the bad lawyer propaganda. We're

going to turn that around here on the 10 gold rules podcast,

tell us a little bit about your business, like, what services do

you generally provide to law firms?

Well, I have a vast array of services. Jay

everything from processes, procedures, systems, operations

all the way. Related to the other gamut of rain making with

attorneys, developing them to attain what they believe is

attainable, but don't know how to get there.

I love it. Why don't we just jump right into

the 10 golden rules of how to run your law firm? Because

Bianca is, as she said, a career long expert in this area, and

she's helped so many folks I know basically structure a law

firm for success when they lose employees. She helps them hire

the employees, train the employees. She's helping C level

executives with high level business strategies, including

profitability and succession planning. So she's really,

really covers it all when it comes to making your law firm

work. But today we're going to really start at the start, and

we're going to go through how to make your law firm super

successful. So the first one, and this is Bianca's words,

start from the bottom up. So what do you mean by that?

Well, Jay, so many businesses are focusing on

the people they consider making the revenue for the firm, which

are your attorneys. And they're not really focusing on all the

people that it takes to get you where you want to go, so

everywhere from the receptionist all the way through your CFO or

fractional CFO. It's really important to engage them, to ask

their opinion. We're always trying to come with the way to

do it, what to do, when to do it, and if we just put even a

one on one or a small committee together that focuses in the

area of their day to day, I bet you're going to come up with

solutions that you didn't even think about and that will just

help Springboard you to where you need to go. And the right

person for the right amount of salary is doing the work we

always have to start from the bottom. Yeah. Start from

the bottom up is about hiring, right? So what are

some great strategies for hiring the best people?

Well, I think if they have the right skill set

to begin with, the only thing you're hiring to at that point

is attitude. Attitude is everything, and it has to match

your environment, the atmosphere, the way you

structure your vision and your mission so that everything is

aligned, and hire that a personality. Maybe you're going

to pay a little more money. They are usually the right people to

hire. Might be a little bit of conflict and personality, but

they're going to get the job done.

So you believe higher for attitude, Train for

aptitude, correct. We also are super focused on our culture at

10 golden rules, and I'll talk more about the EOS operating

system, but we've clearly defined our mission and our core

values, and in every part of my job as the visionaries to

debrief every prospect on the company's core values, which are

fun and easy, expect excellence, own it and solve it and lead the

trends on innovation. So I take all prospective employees

through that, and I say, Look, if you don't expect excellence

in your work, in your co workers, if you don't deliver

what you say you will. When you say you will, you know you're

not going to really fit in with our team, because our team has

extremely high standards and values, and a lot of times,

like, if an employee is not working out, they come to me, my

staff comes to me and they say, look, we've been covering this

person for a couple months, but they're not cutting it. So the

culture is a beast in it, in and of itself, what do you recommend

to nurture culture?

Well, again, it's about buy in. If you do not

allow your people to have buy in say so, they're going to be a

little apprehensive to be honest with you. And honesty is the

best policy, especially in the legal world, where ethics is on

high, and you want to make sure you dot those eyes and cross

those T's always.

So the first golden rule for running your law

firm and succeeding is start from the bottom up and start

with your people. The second one is run your business like a

business, and this is the one I've been talking about a fair

bit lately, from stages, and we've done a great webinar on

Eos, and we had a fantastic EOS panel at tgr live, our live

conference last month. And EOS is the Entrepreneurial Operating

System. There's a great book by Gino Wickman called traction,

and another great book I recommend for the visionaries

called Get a grip, which is actually told in the fable, in a

story format. It's a lot if you're the founder of your

business, read, get a grip before you read traction. But

Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or scaling up,

regardless of which business system you follow, highly

recommend following a business system. And when I say run your

business like a business, I mean, since we've gone to Eos,

you. We really have aligned our roles properly. I'm in the role

of visionary, and I'm doing things that I love doing and

things I'm good at, and other people on my team are doing

things that they love doing and things they're good at, and

going through the weekly accounting statements wasn't one

of the things I love doing, or I was very good at. Now we've got

someone who loves doing it. And guess what? It's getting done

all the time and getting done properly. My counsel for run

your business like a business is really have a system, and I

highly recommend Eos, but definitely have something like

that in place. Bianca, why don't you comment on run your business

like a business?

So when I think about running your business like

a business, it's not only the day to day. It's about what

you're putting yourself in position of is being that

visionary as well, and to have the goals, make those

milestones, get to those rocks out of the way and and really

just make sure that you're doing what you like to do for me, Jay,

my favorite saying is, work on your business instead of in your

business. If you're the leader of the pack, you should be the

visionary. You should be scaling yourself where you have people

supporting you and like myself and being a coach, I'm like the

drug dealer, right? I'm pushing you. I'm giving you what you

need. I'm making you get to where you have to go. Or, on a

simpler note, I'm your GPS. Give me some good information, I'll

get you where you want to go. Bad information. We're lost. I

love it. Work on your business, not in your

business. And if you're still starting out a lot of times,

like early in my career, I would always make Fridays my day, and

I wouldn't schedule any client meetings, and I would work on

the business on Fridays. Do you recommend something like that as

well?

Well, I take a little different approach. You

know, your Friday has eight hours in it, so how about giving

yourself an hour and a half every day to start your day

breathe. Take a breath. Look at what your goals are for that

day, for that next three days that week, and it will allow you

to set yourself apart from everyone else, because many

people that, when I go in to work with them, they say, Oh,

well, I take every Monday off just to do marketing. Okay, good

for you. How's it working for you? Well, I don't know. That's

why I brought you in. So sometimes it works and sometimes

it doesn't, great.

So number two is, run your business like a

business. Number three, financials. Why don't you talk

about what's important in Financials, planning,

forecasting, yeah,

you know, it surprises me how many law firms

I go into they have no idea where they're going, just that

they're making money. And that's not the end all catch all when

it comes to finance, it is so important to have a budget stick

to that budget plan forecast. Have someone come in like myself

and evaluate, are you pricing right? Are your fees at the

right level, or are you just chasing whatever the market is

doing, and is that allowing you to get the biggest bang for your

buck with the ShakeOut to the bottom line so you have put more

money in your pocket. There's so many formulas that I've worked

on for the last 40 years that when I speak to my attorneys,

they're like, I never even thought of it that way, because,

like, hello, we can make a lot of money together. Let's talk

about it.

And what does a firm go from needing a

bookkeeper to really needing a true CFO who is doing planning

and forecasting

right from the beginning? Jay, there are so

many fabulous fractional CFOs out there. There's fractional

marketing people. There's even yourself. There's fractional

people you could hire. It's not like you have to make it hiring

an agency, you know? Yeah,

we really fulfill a CMO function chief marketing,

that's

right, that's right. And I think that's

fabulous. And every time I look there's such a great umbrella of

these fractionals out there, they're maybe still a little

costly. But you know what I like to say, Jay, you're on their

team, but not on their payroll.

I love it, systems, processes and

procedures. Was the fourth one we came up with. What do you

think are the super important SPPs?

Yeah, the SPPs in everything you do, and you

can talk to any OCD person, which I am not. They actually

have systems and processes and procedures because they can't do

it any other way. So the one good thing about people that are

OCD is they do everything the same all the time, and it's very

consistent. And it may be annoying. I hate when someone

straightens out my pen. It might be annoying, but they do it the

same way every time. So with every single thing we do, from

the receptionist greeting people out the door all the way to your

back office, trust, accounting, however you decide is the way

you want your firm to operate has to be bought in by every

individual in that firm. It does no good if one department does

it one way and another department does it another way.

This is the hardest thing to get under control with any company,

because you even see it in something as simple as naming a

document, and once you get everybody with buy in, the only

way to do that is to get them to the table with you and see what

works and doesn't work for them, and then shake out the medium.

And that's where your systems, processes and procedures supply.

And it's super important to get to that next

level too, because you just pointed out, like two different

departments are using different naming protocols and different

systems and procedures, it's very, very hard to for new

employees to figure out what the heck to do. So at 10 golden

rules and using the EOS system that we mentioned earlier,

Entrepreneurial Operating System, there's a thing in the

books called SOP standard operating procedures. And so a

big part of the first year or so of getting rolling with EOS is

you write those standard operating procedures. And so we

put them in a couple places. We use a software project

management software called clickup, and we also have a lot

of checklists and a lot of loom videos that show employees how

to do something. Because part of being excellent as a firm is if

you figure out a great way to do something, then you document it,

and the next time you do it, you do it the same way. And then if

you test something and you find a better way to do it, you

revise your loom videos, you revise your training docs, like

I always use the example of and a lot of firms are adding second

and third and fourth and seventh locations. And so we're often

setting up a new Google business profile, which is your Google

Maps address. And so a lot of times we're setting up that new

Google Maps and so we've now documented the best practices.

What are the practice areas? What are the best ways to set up

the address, what are the best ways to set up the photos and

things like that? And we've learned best practices by trial

and error and through the industry and through other

experts and things like that. And so we document all of that

in our SOPs, standard operating procedures. It goes in clickup,

and there's checklists and loom videos for a new when an

employee gets assigned the test, and then it's also great for

training, like, if the employee doesn't get it right, you can

refer back to the checklist and say, how'd you do it? How'd you

not do it? Next one up is appreciation, and you picked

this one, so why don't you go first?

Well, in all years that I've been in

business, I found there's really only three or four things

anybody really wants out of that business. One is recognition and

appreciation. Two is money. Three is position, whether it's

a title or stepping up into a office with a window. And then

three is to know that they bring value. I mean, four is to know

that they bring value. And the recognition is super important.

It could be a simple thank you. It doesn't need to even be more

or suddenly, after six months, you've given a paralegal

business cards because you want her to hold herself out to the

rest of the world that she works proudly for this firm, and

you're proud of her as well. Just simple, simple things, just

like that. A gift card. We always think we have to throw

more money at people, but the first thing they want is to be

appreciated.

Yeah, there's a great again. I keep referring

back to EOS. And part of why I love the books traction is that

it gives us answers to all these things in a simplified way. So

one of the things is called a core values shout out. And every

time an employee does something that reinforces your core

values, we post it in our Slack channel, and we do it. We I just

did a couple core value shout out in a meeting we had with the

team this afternoon. And so every time that you recognize it

gives you a format for recognizing clients doing the

right things, and then it reinforces your core values and

retrains on those core values. And like all of our employees,

can quote the core values. Now we're about a year and three

months into full us implementation, but it allows

everybody to recognize everybody else, and it allows everybody to

sort of reinforce the things that we believe makes our

company special

awesome. I'm glad to hear that, that's for

sure.

So let me hit the first five again as a refresh.

The first one is start from the bottom up. Second one is run

your business like a business. Third one is financials. Fourth

is SOPs or SPP. You called it systems, processes and

procedures. And the fifth one is appreciation, showing

recognition for your staff in different ways. Number six is

network. You called it networking. I called it rain.

Making so very important part of building your business. And

we're both, we're probably both in the top five percentile of

networking. I'm speaking on on our behalf. Why don't you talk

about what you think is important for lawyers to learn

about networking?

Well, it's definitely a function that you

need to do when I coach with my C suite managing partners,

owners. We always talk about, every single day, you have to

have a networking moments. And I call it networking because,

yeah, you're rain making you're looking for the final take, so

to speak, hoping they'll become a client, or at least do

business with you. And networking is more like mining,

because if you're not networking, you're not working.

So it's part of the work day. So whether it's a coffee, a

breakfast, a lunch, a cocktail, a dinner, or just a pure

networking event. It's something that should be on your calendar

every single day. I promise you your business will grow by 20%

can't guarantee it. My I will promise you that will grow by at

least 20%

I love that, so I call it rain making. And

there's, again, there's, if you really want to delve deep in

this we've had two rain making webinars, and they're on our

YouTube channel, the 10 golden rules YouTube channel. But you

know, some of the things that I think are super important in

this category is that referrals are such a huge part of

business. Every business and every law firm will tell you

their best cases or most of their cases come from referrals,

either from referring attorneys, past clients, referring

strategic business partners, professional services. How do

you build that referral network? And the first thing is, we

always talk about no like trust in an advanced one is no like

trust refer so you're not I'm not going to recommend Bianca

the first time I meet her, but when I see that, she shows up

consistently for our lawyers networking group, and then she

takes a leadership role, and then she chairs some meetings,

and then she says some really smart things, and then people

speak really highly about Bianca over a period of time, I get to

know like and trust her. And then maybe we break bread or go

for coffee or spend some time at an event, a cocktail party for

the group. Second thing is one on ones. And a lot of people

don't know this term, and I didn't know it early enough in

my career, but basically, if you go to if all Bianca and I ever

did was go to the Florida lawyers network, and we only

showed up a couple times a year, there's no way we would develop

a relationship. There's no way we would be able to refer each

other business, because a one on one takes it from a much higher

level. So when you when we meet up at an educational monthly

meeting or a cocktail party, like, you only get two or three

minutes, Hey, how are you? How's business? How's the kids? It's

very superficial. But when you do a one on one, like, if you

have lunch with Bianca and I spend some time together, I get

to learn about her family, I get to learn about a business. I

learn about what's a good referral for her, the kind of

questions I ask. So one on one, super important. The next one, I

call 111, and that's a little different from one on ones.

Everybody should be in three groups. So one would be a

professional group, like we're in the Florida lawyers network,

or you're in the Bar Association. The second one

would be like a personal and maybe they're in in like the

men's club at your church or something like that. And then

the third one could be more of a passion, so personal,

professional and passion, and that might be your kids soccer

team. But don't just go to the soccer games. Get on the

committee. Help raise money for the annual trip when you go play

at a tournament or something like that, get to know the other

dads or moms and get a little bit involved, and then make sure

that you spend some time getting to know what's a good referral

for their business or their life, and make sure they get to

know that you're a personal injury attorney, you're a family

law attorney, because the worst thing is, one of the kids on the

soccer team gets a divorce, and you don't get The case if you're

a family lawyer. Another thing I say is, and this is from my

friend Jeff. Michelle, shout out to Jeff, if he's listening, is,

collect passions. And I learned this from Jeff, and it's a great

question to ask in networking, what are your hobbies? What are

your passions? And then write that down, like, keep it, track

of it. And then when I go back to someone, I can say, Hey, how

are the Raiders doing? Or whatever, whatever they're

really into. And then the final one is, this is an advanced tip

for those of you who are a pretty good networkers, like

you're on Bianca's level. And one of the things I learned from

another friend of mine is that some of the best referral

relationships to make are with other people who sell to the

same. You other people who do what you do, let's say a lot of

people would be super focused on we're talking about lawyers, and

you want to always work with lawyers. And so a lot of people

try and do all their networking with lawyers, but that's a

mistake, because I want to build a relationship with Bianca,

because Bianca probably has 50 lower clients. I have over 50

lawyer clients, so I can make 50 referrals to Bianca, so I'm a

much better relationship rainmaking referral partner for

Bianca, and she is for me, than one on one with attorneys. So

any other last thoughts on networking and rain making?

Absolutely the biggest failure to rain making

and networking is not following up, it's follow up, follow up,

follow up. It's not just a meet, it's that thank you note. It's

following up in two to three months, like you said, with that

tidbit of something personal and or asking a question that you

know they can solve. That is the way you stay connected, and that

is the most important thing. And I did want to add, as far as

working with other, let's say, business partners that are not

lawyers, when you're working in the lawyer space, my first two

clients came from business partners who I'm forever

indebted to, because they went into the space. They saw an

issue. They said, You need Bianca. And guess what? My

career took off.

That's a great point, by the way, and the

handwritten note is such a great thing. And I want to give a

shout out to Aaron Anderson. And Aaron is a rock star recruiter,

and so if you're an attorney and you want to hire attorneys, you

want to hire paralegals. I'm giving a shout out to Aaron

Anderson, because Erin Anderson the first great referral I gave

her not only sent me a handwritten note, but she did

research and found a great restaurant in my area and sent

me a restaurant gift card, and it was very nice. So Aaron,

thank you and everybody, if you're hiring, reach out to Erin

and she's actually been on one of our podcasts, so you can

learn more about Aaron Anderson. The next one up is cross chain

and cross sell. And I do cross fitness, but I'm going to let

you talk about cross train, cross sell,

absolutely. At one time, I worked with Hank

Adorno from Adorno, and yes, and he was not doing this with our

89 attorneys, and I brought it into the firm, and we started

cross selling, doing dog and pony shows for every area of

practice, and when we had a conglomerate or even a

municipality within Our organization, because we were

one of the largest minority firms in South Florida, we would

put on a little bit of a seven minutes on the pony show. And we

gained so much traction with clients that existed by letting

them know what else we did in the firm. It is amazing, and the

best place to do that, Jay is on the golf course. I love it. We

would mix our two SIMs two different areas of practice. We

wouldn't they weren't playing with someone familiar to them,

and we did business all day long. No, the alcohol didn't

hurt, but we did business all day long on the golf course.

I love it. Cross train and cross sell to sell

business from multiple practice areas. Great One and and half of

it is that people just need to know what else you do, and then

they'll think of you for referrals as well. Next one,

number eight, training and continuing education. Want to

take this one

Sure. Well, the greatest gift that you can give

to your employees, your staff, especially even your attorneys,

is continuing education. And I'm talking about retreats, team

building, bringing somebody in for a lunch and learn like Ma,

and really giving them some things, more than a a lunch,

more than just a thank you, they will love you to death. I tell

you right now, it's really goes a long, long way. And if you

want to know more about that, I'm happy to do that. The

training, I can't tell you how many people tell me they've

never been trained. They were showed their desk, get to work

and just go for it. And that is the saddest setup for failure

that you can do to any employee. So if you need training, what I

used to do when I was with my firm for 20 years, that new

employee got a t shirt that said, Do Not Disturb on the

back, I'm in training, and all day for two weeks, they were

trained on every aspect every person was the least, the least

time any person spent in our firm was 14 years. We were in

business for 21 that's pretty good. A

rock star level. I love it. Couple thoughts on

training. First of all, it the attorneys should train

themselves. And I said this at our conference, 10 golden rules,

growth strategies for law firms. At the start, I said, Everyone,

please stand up and give yourselves a round of applause,

because it's the 5% of people who go to conferences spend time

getting educated that are really the top 5% of law firms. There's

zero question in my mind that the people who succeed are

constantly learning, constantly striving to get better. And

maybe the second part of that this is equally as important, is

they execute on what they learn like here's my quick pro tip for

the conference that I gave everyone right at the start of

our conference. I said, take your journal, and I gave

everybody one of these little blue binders. And I said, open

it up, and you'll see it here, if you're watching on YouTube,

if you're not on the video, I said, open it up and write

action items on at on the first page of your book, and then I

want you to scroll four pages further and write down notes.

And after every presentation, I said, Okay, I want you to go

through your notes, and I want you to star the top four or five

things you learned from this presentation. Now I want you to

go back and look at the star items. What are you going to

take action on? What are you going to commit to get done

after you go home from this conference? And one of the great

things is you need to do the learning, but you need to

execute. Any tips on execution?

Oh, wow, I'm not sure. First I agree with

attorneys training themselves, because they walk into a firm

and they're pretty blind to the first thing, which is business

ethics, which I train to a fault. And I just think that

anyone that sticks to implementation of any sort also

repeats back what they believe they understood. They'll get it

right every single time, and always strive to go that one

extra mile, one extra step, so ethics really focus on what

you're doing, repeat back what you learned, so that you're

billing properly, because that's really the disaster with new

attorneys. And to also just go that extra mile. Education

always. We must learn all the time under

promise over deliver great strategy,

absolutely, um, we're coming up on time, so we're going to go

quick on the last couple ones, work, life, balance. What was

your thinking on that one?

The word that comes to mind is boundaries. You

really have to set boundaries. But when you're growing in a law

firm, especially attorneys, if you know the expectations of the

partner you're working with, you will succeed if they're a nine

to fiver. Is it okay for you to be a nine to fiver? Maybe, but

the expectations might be more because they paid their dues a

long time ago. So find out what the boundaries are. If you don't

ask, you don't get and if you don't implement what you're

told, then you've just ignored whatever direction they want you

to go in. I think that's really important, and you do it at the

get go, you might not get hired because they want more out of

you, but at least you won't be miserable and find that right

adjustment.

So for me, work life balance, two main thoughts

come to mind. Number one is you gotta find time for personal

fitness, and I've been cranking the 75 hard program for a couple

years now, and working out for me, it's like, just go every

single morning. There's no excuses. There's no days off.

Unfortunately, I missed a day. I was out of over, like 100 days

when I when our conference came along, and the first day of the

conference, I just couldn't get it done, because it was like

from 6am till like 9:10pm and I was exhausted. I could barely

even walk my dog. So personal wellness, personal fitness,

gives you the energy to be like positive with your team. When

I'm not working out, I can be pretty cranky, but obviously it

gives me a ton more more energy. So you gotta schedule that. The

other thing that I've learned, and this is another pro tip, is

you got to schedule your vacations and you got to

schedule your days off. Because, like, we think to ourselves,

like, Hey, I'm going to take time off, but if I don't put it

on my calendar, I'm swamped with meetings, and it's super hard to

carve out time, so I carve out time for the important

conferences and travel. And here's another pro tip, have a

family meeting and plan out like when you're going to take some

vacations, and if you do it well in advance, it's much less

expensive, and all the other reasons why you'll get it done.

So number nine, work life balance and drum roll please.

Number 10 of the 10 golden rules for running your law firm like

above. US is Exit Planning, sustainability and succession

planning. Bianca, this is one of your expertise. Hit it

all right. Well, first of all, don't wait.

That's my first warning to you. It's never too early to start

planning your exit strategy, your sustainability is always

ongoing, and checking that and measuring it and making sure

you're on point of where you want to go. And of course, look,

time flies by. You turn around and 10 years are gone. The

sweetest spot for you to start your planning is before you turn

50, so that you least have 15 years. If we're going to use the

number of Social Security, 65 to get to where you have to go,

minimum. Minimum is five years of planning, and that's if you

go, yikes. I'm 60 years old. I didn't know planning. What do

you have to do? You have to put some procedures in place. If

you're lucky enough to have one of your nieces, sons, daughters,

cousins, brothers, work with you and your business, then there's

a plan there, especially if they're younger than you. If

there's no one to leave your business to don't throw it away.

We can figure out all types of things. An example I can give

you is merging into a firm that wants you there at senior level,

and you work out for five years, segwaying your clients into that

firm, adjusting them to that firm, and then having a buyout

or a payout over time so that you still have residuals. It's

possible, if you want to talk to me about it, I've done it

already, so let's talk about it.

So talk to Bianca. That's a great tip.

Another good one I like. I read a book called Built to Sell by

John morlo, and I got to know John, and worked with him on

some stuff. He has a great podcast where he interviews

folks who sold their business. But the most important thing I

would share from that book is you have to build a business

that isn't reliant on you as the founder and the visionary. So if

10 golden rules requires Jay Berkowitz to sell, requires Jay

Berkowitz to do the marketing requires Jay Berkowitz to go to

all the client meetings. Then I can't sell 10 golden rules, and

we're not selling anytime soon, by the way, for the happy

clients. But over the long term, we're building a business that I

can take a vacation and the place will still run

phenomenally well. So really good book to read is built to

sell. Well, we did it. Bianca, we got through all 10. I'm going

to list them super quick, but the 10 golden rules of running

your law firm like a business. Number one is, start from the

bottom up. To run your business like a business. Work on the

business, not in the business. Three is, have great financials

and get a fractional CFO when you're just starting out, you

can't just run with a bookkeeper. Number four is SOPs

or SPPs, systems, processes and procedures. Number five is

appreciation, and that's mostly for your staff, but also for

past clients and pro partners. Number six is networking and

rain making, how you can become that Rainmaker who makes it rain

business on your business. Number seven is cross train and

cross sell. Number eight training and continuing

education. So great training for new employees, for ongoing

improvement for your existing employees, and training for

yourself, getting out to conferences, listening to

podcasts and webinars like this one. And really, if you're not

getting better, you're falling behind. And the last one is Exit

Planning, sustainability and succession planning. Bianca,

this was awesome. Thank you so

much. Thank you. Thank you. Last

two questions are super easy. What's a great

referral for you? Who can we all send your way?

Anyone that just wants to brainstorm? I know

you hold yourself out as a visionary, but my brain has been

all over the place with hundreds of attorneys that all bring

their own flavor. You know, we got vanilla chocolate and

strawberry when the machine only makes vanilla. And I love to

share that information, because I'm very passionate, and

passionate never fails.

By the way, when I say I'm a visionary, it's not

like some ego thing in Eos, in an EOS business, there's two key

roles, the visionary and the integrator. And that VI duo,

it's called, is what makes a business school, know it well,

know it well. But you know I am, I'm kind of visionary too. You

are the visionary. And final question, Where can people get

in touch with you? Well,

I kept everything simple for you

people. My website is Bianca marreros.com Well, all my

information is there, my phone number, my. Email is there? My

emails flipped. Marias Bianca, gmail.com and I'm always

available for a chit chat cup of coffee or to see where we can

meet and have like minds work together.

Of course, links will be in the show notes.

Bianca, this was awesome. Thank you so

much. Thank you.