183: New Book Launch! Scaling Law with EOS Implementer, Author & Profitability Strategist Brooke Lively

So Brooke, you have a new book coming out February 24 called scaling law. What's the number one reason why people should get this book?

Because it really shows you what kind of difference EOS can make in your firm. Build on that. It shows a number of firms in there that went from being totally reliant on the owner and doing, not bad, a million, $2 million a year. One of the firms is now doing, I don't know she's going to do 60 or 70 million this year. Wow, fantastic. That growth in five years, 10 years. Another firm that had big growth, there's one in there. I think I talk about that's going to do 30 million in 2030 that's their deal. But they also it talks about how they solved other problems, like one guy talks about the deli line outside his office of people waiting to ask him questions. Somebody else is I talk about him being the magic eight ball, because everybody, every decision was landing on his desk, and it doesn't have to be that way. A lot of these people. Or when you implement Eos, you get back, you get you become more profitable.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules, Internet Marketing for law firms. Podcast. Great guest, today, return. Guest, very few of those. Brooke, lively. Brooke and I actually did the first podcast live at the pilma conference, and it was just as the show was wrapping up and there was people coming and going, trying to buy us drinks and things like that. So I knew Brooke was such a good host that she would have tons of great additional information. Turns out she's launching a new book. We'll get into that in 30 seconds after I tell you what's coming up in just one month. Tgr live is our annual conference. Bigger, better, more awesomer than ever. We've got some amazing speakers like Steve Kirsten, who's going to teach us four ways to make millions more from your cases. Stacy brown Randall is on fire. Brook, I'm sure you know Stacey, how to get referrals without even asking. Chris Keller is going to share with us five disciplines to transform your life and your practice. And Chris has actually transformed his life. He's running triathlons now got a multi million dollar practice in five different states. Cassidy Lewis, cmo to the stars is fantastic. Cmo, with Cooper Hurley and Rob Levine is going to teach us five star Operation Secrets from a million dollar law firm and tell us all about AI for law firms. And that's just scratching the surface. Brooke, you were at tgr live last year. What would you say to the folks who haven't been to tgr live?

First of all, I better see you next week or next month at tgr live, because it was great. I think what I really liked was the ability to really connect with people. There were great speakers that had great information, but it was really the interaction that happened outside of the room, the conversations about what we were learning and how people were implementing it in their firms, what their experiences had been. So there was not only great learning from the stage, but there was great learning and sharing from all the other people that attended.

Thank you so much. We try super hard if you've never been or if you've been awkward and alone at the big conference before, I promise you, by lunch on the first day, you're going to have lots of friends. We do interactive networking at the first break. We do the second, actually third annual rock paper scissors at the second break, you'll have friends and some best friends, new best friends. By lunch, and you'll be hanging out with some cool new people. As a matter of fact, we have 10 amazing ambassadors this year. Tgr live. Their sole job is to make friends and introduce you to people, organize group dinners. Show you around the the event and the cocktail parties,

but you just go find your most extroverted friends. Yeah? Oh, yeah. I mean,

you know guys like Gary sarner and Paul Faust. I mean, these guys have life, life of the party anyways, and this year they get a big Ambassador tag so they can do their job in a more formal manner. Yeah, Paul, anyways. Enough about tgr live. We hope we see you next. Next month, March, 16 and 17th at the opal grand in Delray Beach, Florida. Lots of information available, 10 Golden rules.com/tgr live, or just 10 golden rules. But Brooke, welcome back to the 10 golden rules podcast. Brooks, a multi best selling author. Lacher, she's an exit specialist, and she's now one of the top EOS specialists for law firms. And you all know we love EOS book traction and the book Get a grip and we run on the US operating system at 10 golden rules. So Brooke, welcome back to the 10 golden rules Internet Marketing for law firms podcast.

Thank you so much.

I need a shorter title that I can do without losing my breath.

Yeah, you do. You're a marketing guy. Can't you work on that a little bit?

Yeah, like our conference we just called tgr live, but technically it's tgr live growth strategies for law firms. Brooke, tell us a little bit about your background and your company, and then let's get into the new book.

So a little bit about my background. I have a thing for attorneys. I love attorneys. Father's an attorney, brother's an attorney, two uncles, lots of cousins, and can't tell you how many six foot two left handed lawyers that wear glasses. I've dated in my life, way too many.

You've dated multiple six foot two left handed lawyers, oh

yeah, dated guys in high school that grew up to be six foot two left handed lawyers that wear glasses. Thank you very much.

There's got to be another story there, but stick to the business aspect.

All right, we're going to stick to the business through a quirk of fate, after grad school, I was working at a hedge fund, ended up running my family's law firm, which was not what I had expected, but hired someone to help with sales and marketing, not you. I didn't know about you 15 years ago, but I hired someone, and his clients started coming to me and saying, can you do for us? What you do for your family? And that was when I really started to understand that most lawyers truly did have practices and they were running their firms like a business. And so I started a fractional CFO company for law firms to help them run using the numbers. And while I was doing that, we started running on Eos, because it's a great way to run a company, but we started looking at our clients, and we kind of divided our clients into three buckets. Bucket one started working with us and had incredible results, like hockey stick, everything went high into the right exactly what you want to see. Group too.

I'm a Canadian and a hockey player. I love hockey sticks, but particularly so much so in business,

exactly, everybody loves a good hockey stick. In business, group two was this slow and steady, like they were making really good progress. And group three, you couldn't even tell we were working with them, and we're like, What in the world are we doing with group one that we're not doing with group three? So we're a bunch of data driven women. So we dug into the data, and after a lot of research, we figured out we were using the the same information we were giving, the same types of advice, we were using the same tools, or making the same tools available to all three groups. Group One was executing, and group three wasn't. And so we found that fascinating. Okay, wow. Look, if you take our advice, shit happens. Good.

Shit sounds familiar, by the way, it's very similar in the internet

marketing business, it is amazing what happens when you execute, right? Yeah, like

you recommend things. We send over videos and copy the folks who don't get back to us for weeks on end, the content doesn't get on the website. SEO needs stuff. It needs content on the website. Yeah, I've got to approve it. So it needs one of, one of the elements that helps folks succeed.

Well, so we were kind of intrigued. Why was this one group executing so well? Why was this other group not executing? And so we dug in further, and what we discovered was that all of group one, all of the hockey stick firms, with the exception of one, were running on Eos, interesting, and that was what was making the difference. That was what was allowing them to execute. And so we started recommending EOS to all of our clients, and go get on EOS. And I got a lot of feedback. Feedback was, I can't find an E. OS implementer who will work with an attorney. They say, No law firms. And I'm like, oh. And then the second thing that I heard was I found someone, but they don't understand the legal industry. They can't possibly help me implement EOS if they don't get my business. And so eventually Pam, our integrator at Cath cap, started running the CFO business. Doesn't need me anymore, and so I went off to become an EOS implementer. I was still hearing those same things. I can't find an implementer who will work with a law firm, and they don't know how the legal industry works. I only work with law firms. I can only work with so many. So I wrote a book scaling law about how to implement EOS and law firms, and I'm training EOS implementers on how to work with law firms so that they understand the bar rules, so that they understand the difference between personal injury versus or contingency versus flat fee versus hourly, so that they get The bar rule constraints and the little things in Eos, and how being in the legal industry affects the way you implement

so we're going to double back for one sec, and I'm going to ask the question I always ask. When you tell people, hey, go check out Eos, what do you tell them to do?

I actually ask, I tell them to go read a book. But before I recommend a book, I ask them what kind of book they like to read? Do you want to read the fairy tale story, or do you want to read something more like a textbook? So you've got the two books right there in your hand, if you like

listening on audio. I've got two books in my hands. One's called traction, by Gino Wickman. One's called Get a grip by Gino Wickman and Mike Patton. Well, let Brooke explain the difference between two books.

Yeah, traction is the original book, and it is very much textbook. This is how you implement, this is what you do.

Get a group great for the COO type officer, Director of Operations, for

that person that likes to get nitty gritty down in the details, get a grip. Is the story of a company that implemented EOS and what happened? And it's was pretty truthful. There's some turnover, there's some things that happen. Implementing EOS isn't always the easiest

thing, and it's a true story, or very close to it, right? But one of Gina wickman's first clients, right?

So when I wrote scaling law, I did something kind of in between. I wanted lawyers to have something that was entertaining to read. I personally find myself absolutely hysterical. So it's a pretty entertaining book, as far as I'm concerned, but I went out and I talked to my clients. I talked to other people's clients, so the book is full of their stories. What it was like for them to implement, how they did it, what was hard, where they tripped up, and what made the difference. So it's kind of a combination of a how to and a this is the story, because without a story, it's just Troy

and boring. And second, double back, what is you asking? Give us a very basic description. You led with the punchline. And I love that. I'm going to tell that story, that a whole bunch of your clients were super successful and a whole bunch of your clients were unsuccessful, and so the clients that were super successful were all running on EOS.

Yeah, so EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Gina Wickman cobbled it together. I don't know what, 25 years ago, probably at this point, and it's just a set of simple tools. There is nothing revolutionary in it. It's the way they're put together that helps you run your business. It gives you structure to improve what he calls the six key components. So when we talk about the six key components, it's vision. Where are you going? What do you see in the future for your firm? And. Does everyone in the firm see the same future? Do you share that vision? People? Do you have the right people in the right seats? Do they understand their jobs data? I mean, this one, Jay, I'm a CFO at heart. That's why Gino wrote on the front of, you know, a couple of my books that I am one of the best people at the data component out there. I love data. Let's run it by the numbers, not by gut instinct. Issues is the next one, if we can't solve the issues once and for all, if we can't solve the problems at their root, as opposed to continuing to simply treat the symptoms, you're never going to make any forward progress. We've got to come up with some processes. What are those key processes in the firm, the 20% 20% of the actions, they get 80% of the work done. And it really is a 2080 kind of thing. And then the last is traction, and that's about bringing the vision down to the ground and really executing on it, making sure that everybody is rowing in the same direction. Everyone is delivering on what they say they're going to do. And when you can get those six key components really strong, we graded on a score of zero to 100 highly scientific. Where do you think you are? But if we can get that to 80% no one's ever going to be 100% perfect. That's ridiculous. That's utopia. But if we can get to 80% strong, oh my gosh, you're firing on all cylinders, you're having huge double digit growth. But it's not painful growth, it's exciting growth, and it's

profitable growth, and it's manageable growth. So I

want to build on all those things. I made a couple notes, and we'll talk about them, maybe not all of them, but one of the things I really love about EOS and traction and the book traction, and the topic of traction in the six principles, is that one thing I really appreciate about Gino is he kept the principles really simple. And when you say traction is about rolling it out to your company, what I really, really love about us is, yeah, sure, I understand it. Our management team understands it, and most importantly all, the team understands it, because the principles are super simple. And one of the reasons why I think it worked so well is that Geno didn't try and recreate the wheel like there's a wheel out there, as matter of fact, the six principles looks like a wheel, but the wheels out there. And I love the fact that he took terminology we're very familiar with. Like, for 10 years we'd been using the rocks, the concept of big quarterly projects that we identified the things that would move the needle in our company over and above, like the daily work, and we figured out our top five quarterly rocks. And we've been doing that for 10 years, way before EOS and Gino didn't try and rename that. He just said, Hey, there's this great principle in the Rockefeller habits, called rocks, quarterly rocks. And so most people would go out and say, oh, there's this thing we've got to develop called boulders. And every quarter, like they rename things so that they own it. They basically rip off the concept, because only so many concepts out there. So I love the fact that he kept it simple. And like we say, traction, ruling it out. Another one you talked about is issues. And I try and explain like people are like, Why is everyone so you know, hyped up on us? Why are you guys so happy with the OS and issues is a great example, because every week we have our L 10 meeting, which is what we call our meetings, level 10 meetings in Eos, and we follow the

same agenda, and we work on issues, something called IDs. And what does that mean? Well, it means that if anything comes up during the week that you know the leadership team needs to address, or the marketing team or the sales team or the operations team or the account management team, you put an issue into your L 10 agenda, and there's a software we all use. It's super easy. And then the issue is we do what was called IDs, identify, discuss and solve. And so everyone's been in a million meetings where you talk about the same thing. It goes round and round. You waste an hour, everybody's talking, nobody's solving. And this gives you a really concrete way of storing your issues, prioritizing your issues, addressing your issues, solving your issues. You want to build on that one a little bit.

Yeah, there are two things. So the first is solving the real issue and not the symptom. Because how many times have you dealt with a problem and then three or four weeks later, the same problem is back with a different name, a different client name, right? And you're like, damn, I thought we dealt with this. Well, no, you solved the symptom. So the great thing about IDs is it gets down deep, and when you say you're identifying you're identifying the root cause. And I tell this story a lot. I think about my grandmother. She had been living in a small town. She went to the doctor. He gave her a medication. It had a side effect, so he gave her another medication to treat that side effect, and then there was another side effect and another medication, another side effect and another medication. She ended up moving to Fort Worth she went to see a new doctor, she comes in, she dumps out her 23 prescriptions. And he's like, What is all of this? And she's like, well, I take this one because I have this, and I take this one because of this. And so he went all the way back, and he's like, oh, so if we change your heart medication to a different one, I can get rid of these 22 other things.

Fantastic. I mean,

let's go solve the root problem. I'm from Texas. We say we fix problems with bubble gum and baling wire. Let's quit duct taping them together and actually fix it the first time. The other thing,

let me give you an example of something we dealt with this week, and let's make this practical for people. We had a change in our social media person. So our social media person wanted to go contract and work part time. One of our account managers was formerly in social media. She took over the social media roles, doing a great job, and there was lack of clarity around the contract for the initial person, because the visionary might have done that contract negotiation, yeah, and it might have been done on a napkin.

And I'm impressed that the visionary did it on a napkin, because you're welcome guest. So being a visionary, I might have just thrown some stuff out and moved on.

In the US there's, there's two main roles, which are visionary and integrator. And the visionary is typically the person who goes out and does business deals and speaks on stages and does podcasts and has strategic partnerships. And guess what? Jay's job is at tangled and rules, I'm the visionary, and then the integrator typically runs around after the visionary, putting things like contracts in place and payroll and payments and things like that. So there might have been some discussion about the role of this person. So this was kind of our issue. And you're right, we dug deeper. We're like, we need a new process, because when 10 golden rules was seven people, I hired everybody, I wrote the contract for everybody, I sent it to payroll for everybody. And now we have a management team. We call it our leadership team, and they're doing a lot of the hiring, and they're doing a lot of the managing and supervising. And this social media person reported two levels up to our leadership group, but yet I still did the napkin agreement that was causing a little bit of lack of clarity. That sounds like an end run, yeah. Well, no, it wasn't. It was at the time, it was not at all. But how would you coach us to identify the issue, to identify and then discuss it and solve it. Maybe walk through a real world example.

One of the things that that I tell my leadership teams is that IDs ing really is like great art. You got to work at it. It takes some training. And when you see it, it really is beautiful. And when we talk about art and IDs, ing, when we start to IDs, when you bring up an issue, you're going to want one of three things. You're going to want a r t you're going to want advice, resolution, or you just need to tell people something. And I love. Of getting that clarity in the beginning, because so often, someone will just need to update the leadership team about something, and three other people are trying to solve a problem that isn't there. So does the person with the issue need advice resolution, or do they just need to tell

I love that. By the way, if you're on audio, you see me spiling, because so many times like that would bring a lot of clarity. And what you don't want is like to go around and round around in these conversations. And when you have a great a level 10. You IDs, three or four things, you start them, you finish them, you solve them, and at the end of the thing, you're like, Oh, my God, was that a great meeting? Like, we solved four or five big problems have been hanging around the company, exactly.

So then you start looking for the root issue. So the issue was this person didn't have clarity about their role. Why didn't they have clarity about their role? Well, they didn't have clarity because they didn't have an actual written contract. Well, why didn't they have a written contract? Jay didn't write one. Okay? About 80 or 90% of issues come down to one of two things. It's either a people problem or a process problem. When it's a people problem, it means that the person is either not a core value match, they don't fit the culture of our company, or they don't have what we call GWC their job. They don't get it, they don't want it, or they don't have the capacity to do that job. All right, so Jay, we're assuming that you're a culture match, and we are assuming that you GW see your job. So that means this is probably a process problem. So right there we know that we've got a process problem.

Yeah, no, exactly, and it was, and actually, to be honest, that there was a written contract, and it did go to HR, and it did get on payroll. But what we needed to fix, and what we identified in the process is, first of all, if whoever is doing the agreement, because a lot of times I'm involved at the talking about salaries, and I like to interview everyone, and I do the culture, the culture fit part of Eos, our core values. But what needed to happen was we needed a process that said, here's how we involve the leadership team and the people who this person reported through. And there was a few reasons why that didn't happen, like a pregnancy and a baby and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, what we resolved to was, the next time Jay's involved in hiring, the documentation part should be done by the leadership person, not ij, so you're right, the process, well,

your things like the accountability chart. Does the accountability chart need to be updated? All these things, what needs to change, and who's really responsible for them? One of the great things, and actually it's someone that you and I both know, one of my clients said about the accountability chart, the best thing about it is understanding it lays out very clearly what is my responsibility and what is your responsibility, and that gives everybody so much clarity and confidence.

It's a good idea. I'm going to print out our accountability chart, and I'm going to see where that contract falls. I want to hit one more. And you actually teased it, which is, people, yeah, and there's a great exercise. And this is going to give everybody so much clarity, so much value when they discover this. You explained it, it's right person, right seat. Yeah. And the right person is, does that person align with their core values? So this has been a tremendous exercise for us. We've had a few people who were actually, can't really talk about people, but you know that they weren't. If they weren't, they weren't the right fit, Rs, right. And everybody's had that in companies. We've actually had tremendous experience moving someone where they are in the right seat, so the right person fits your company's core values. So our core values are to make it fun and easy. The job's not easy, but one thing we want to clarify like we want to make it fun. To work with 10 golden rules, and are all the co workers. We want to make it easy for people to work with us and make it easy for your co workers. Like, don't just say, hey, send me the thing fill in this checklist and send them the actual thing that you want them to fill in make it easy for them. The second one is, expect excellence, and we expect excellence of our co workers, of ourselves, our team is eight players, and they don't like working with folks who aren't accountable. If they say they're going to have something done by Friday, send a draft on Thursday, and the next one is called own it and solve it if there's a better way of doing something that we uncover, we want to get everyone to agree on that and then rewrite the standard operating procedures. We have checklists, we use a software management program, and then the final one is lead to trends. And 10 golden rules has a core of innovation right back to our founding. And when new things come out, like the local service ads, we get

really, really good at it, so we become one of the best in the market, the new AI SEO, the AEO, we're calling it answer engine optimization, how to come up in Google, AI searches and chat, GPT searches. We're getting really, really good at leading the trends on this new technology solution. So we go through each of those core values and we say, is the person a fit for each of those core values. So then, if the person's a fit, Brooke said, do they get it? Want it and have capacity. And why don't I hand that one off to you, and you can explain.

GWC, let me just say that when we grade people on core values, we give them a plus, a plus minus or a minus. We give them a plus. If they do it most of the time, we give them a plus minus, they're about half and half. We do a minus if they do it less than half. Someone explained it to me this way, once that I love you're going to Vegas, you're taking your child's or your children's college fund, and you're going to make a series of bets over the weekend on whether this person does this core value or not? And if you think that over a series of bets, you'd probably make money that this person exhibits. So for like us, one of our core values is be a partner. If you think that person, out of 100 rolls of the dice is going to be a partner, and you bet the college fund, that's a plus. If you think you'd come out about even, that's a plus minus. And if you're like, Oh, hell no, I'm not risking the college fund, that's a minus.

I love it. That's a great way of isn't that a great way to think about it? So we figure if the right person and how about right seat?

So right seat is we asked those three questions. GWC, do they get it? Do they understand what the job actually entails? Because very often people don't. They just, they're like, yep, take it good. Got it great. And they don't understand the subtleties and exactly how far that position extends and everything that it entails. Do they want it? Jay, you would be shocked, especially at fast growing firms, how often we promote people that don't really want to be promoted. We do it because they've been with us from the beginning. They got us where we are. We want to reward them because we're so grateful to them.

It's how we give them more money. It's

how we give them more money. They have been with us from the beginning. They love us. They love the firm. They don't want to disappoint us. They take a job, even though they're like, do that, but okay, I'm going to figure it out for Jay, because he's been awesome. And we're setting people up for failure, and then sometimes they're people that want the title or the cash, but they don't actually want the job. So you really need to know, do they truly want the job? Are they going to jump out of bed every morning excited to do it?

I think building on that is one of the things I had to learn as a manager, is not every employee thinks the way you think. That's right. And most people who rise to become leadership or the owner of a company, they wanted it. I mean, I worked weekends and nights and studied and took extra courses and wanted every promotion and every dollar and every step in the ladder, corporate ladder. Not everybody wants a lot. And I learned from my staff, a lot of people just want one role. They want to do it reliably. They want to get commended for it. I want variety. I want four different things on my plate all the time. Oh, yeah. So you've got to break from the mindset of the way you think about employment is not how most of your employees

and Jay, the way you do that is through. I know this is shocking, how. A Conversation with your employees. Ask him, what's important? Do you want to do one thing incredibly well all day long? Or are you totally add and you have to have 14 things going to feel fulfilled. Let's make sure you're somewhere that you want to be and

want it and has capacity. How do you figure that out?

The last one is capacity. Capacity actually has two parts. The first is, do they have the skill set, the knowledge, the capability to do the job. If the answer is no, they don't belong in that job, and you got to move them. None of us are running nonprofits here. We're here to make money. You said that you moved someone from one position to another position recently, the bigger you get, the more opportunity you have to take a right person and find a better seat for them. If they don't have the skill set that you think they can learn in a quick amount of time, you have to ask yourself, Do I have the bandwidth? Does the firm have the bandwidth to teach and train that person and wait until they come up to speed? Because very often you don't, and that person isn't actually going to get trained, and you're going to hurt their career.

Yeah, training is a monster that that we've learned as we've grown, that it's not a part time thing. It's got to be a full time training program documented, and I started T's crossed, it's not a part time thing.

And it is actually cheaper when you're smaller, to hire the more experienced, more expensive employee than to hire the younger, less experienced and train them because of how much that person slows down everybody else in the firm.

Yeah, the other thing we learned about capacity, I've twice over promoted people, and so we have an entry level role in my sales and marketing group called sales assistant. And the first sales assistant I hired was brilliant, and she very quickly became the sales and marketing assistant and the sales and marketing manager, then the sales and marketing director, then she started doing onboarding, then she took on one of the product roles, and then we maxed her out. Even though this person worked fast, was smarter than anyone, brilliant, dedicated. They were balls. Were dropping. Yes, then, just to prove I was not perfect, I did it again. You've promoted her again. Oh, no. We right sized her job. We hired someone new, so she was going to be the sales operations person, and she was so good and so confident and such a great hire that we gave her marketing, and she was so good and so confident that we gave her New Client Onboarding. And guess what, we maxed her out. So we, you know, we had to pull away onboarding Jay.

It's called The Peter Principle, and it's promoting someone to the point of their incompetence.

I don't know. I'd argue that. I think in both of these instances, we promoted someone to their point of over capacity.

So that's the second part of capacity.

They both could have done three of the four jobs exceptionally well, but at four of four jobs, they were both maxed out.

So capacity, there's the skill set part of capacity, and then there's also the time part of capacity. Yeah. So when we're talking about the time part of capacity do they have? Are there enough hours in the day or the week to get their job done? Or did they start running two departments, and you added a third department, and then when you added a fourth, are they now so overloaded that they can't get anything done well, because there just aren't enough hours in the day. And if that's the problem, then you just have to make a plan about how you're going to get some stuff off their plate.

Yeah, exactly. And we fortunately course corrected with both these individuals, and both are superstars with 10 golden rules, and in my heart, so Brooke, let's talk a little bit about the book. Very exciting. You can pre order today. There's a link in the show notes, and a week from this thing. This podcast is coming out February. 17th, a week from today. If you're listening to this on the live feed and just open your iTunes or YouTube this morning. And this podcast is coming out a week from today, February 24 so you can pre order the book and you'll have it in your hot little hands. Tell us a little bit about the book itself and where, where you can get it, and whatnot, why did you get it?

So the book is really the real life stories of what it is like to implement EOS in a law firm, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I worked with about 10 law firms to tell what it was like, and they were really open and really honest. They talked about things like why they didn't do it immediately, or the mistakes they made when they started with EOS. To me, with Eos, yeah, they talked about what worked. They talked about the problems they had with people. They talked about the problems they had with their data. They talked about all kinds of things. And as I go through and I tell their stories, I also introduce the tools that EOS uses to solve those problems, the tools that help you get 80% strong in those six key components,

I love this concept. Did you conceive of this as you were starting this journey with these firms, and did you record a lot of the meetings? How did you actually functionally get all this done while implementing for 10 law firms and running your other business, blah, blah, blah,

yeah, you know how you said that. You took the extra courses and you worked the weekends and the nights. Yeah, that that's how I did it all. I actually developed a list of questions I knew which stories I wanted to hear, yeah, which ones would be really good in the book. And so I developed a list of questions, and then I interviewed people, and I would ask them a question, and if they answered it one way, I would dig deeper, and if they answered it another way, I'm like, Okay, well, they don't have a story to tell about data, or they don't have a story to tell about IDs ing, and we'd move on to something else, and I'd ask a different question. And after I interviewed all of these people, I went through and I got transcripts of all of their interviews. And then said, Ooh, Dave has the best story on this, and John has the best story on this. And I went through and cobbled them together.

So, Brooke, you have a new book coming out February 24 called scaling law. What's the number one reason why people should get this book, because it really shows you what kind of difference EOS can make in your firm. Build on that,

it shows a number of firms in there that went from being totally reliant on the owner and doing, not bad, a million, $2 million a year. One of the firms is now doing, I don't know she's going to do 60 or 70 million this year. Wow, fantastic. That growth in five years. 10 years. Another firm that had big growth. There's one in there, I think I talked about that's going to do 30 million in 2030 that's their deal. But they also it talks about how they solved other problems, like one guy talks about the deli line outside his office of people waiting to ask him questions. Somebody else is I talk about him being the magic eight ball, because everybody, every decision was landing on his desk. And it doesn't have to be that way. A lot of these people, or when you implement Eos, you get back, you get you become more profitable. And when I talk about profit, most people think dollars, and profit isn't just about dollars. There are three kinds of profit. There's money profit, yeah, cash, but there's also time profit and reputational profit. And time profit is being able to leave the office. Not work the nights and the weekends, or as rich Hall told me, being able to truly be present with his family, he spent time with his girls at a hockey game, right at their hockey games, and coaching hockey. But before Eos, he was always checking his phone on the ice post. Eos, the phone's in a bag somewhere, and he is 100% present with them. So he got that time, and really was able to, I'm going to speak for his wife and daughters. I am sure that their relationships with him have improved because he's more present. I'm just guessing,

I don't know, shout out to rich. He's probably listening.

And then the other kind of profit is reputation. The better your firm runs, the better your reputation. And Jay, you know this, if you're getting a lot of three star reviews, you're not going to get a lot of referrals. The cost to get new clients in is going to keep rising, because you've got to overcome your Google score. So if you can get things to run better, your reputation improves. Your reputation improves with clients. It improves with referral sources, and frankly, it just improves in your community and in the legal community. So that is a different kind of profit. And EOS will get you all three kinds, and it will get you the ones that you want the most.

I have two solutions for the deli line, if anyone out there has to build on this. The first one is a concept I learned from my mastermind called the open door. And so many of us who work remote or even if you do have an office in the old days, if your door was open as the owner, people could knock at the door and form the deli line and come and ask you questions. Now, working remote, they have no idea when your door is open when you're just sitting there eating lunch. So I created a calendar spot once a week for half an hour called the open door. And literally, I continually reorient my staff to, hey, there's a really good time to save a couple questions when you need Jay. And it could be something complex or something simple, like just a second factor authentication. Yeah, wait for that. And then another one that, again, I learned from the same mastermind group, is the 131, method as a matter of fact, I think it's in Dan martell's book. Buy back your time. And that is that in the actual agenda for the open door meeting is to come with a 131, which is number one, identify the problem clearly that you're trying to solve. The three is, tell me the three solutions that you looked at, and the one is, tell me the one you recommended and why, and it becomes like super easy for me to approve these. 131, solving problems, because the staff is oriented now to think it through instead of just bringing you problems. And that helps a lot with that time profit, which is pressure. Yeah, a lot of times, as the owner, founder, everyone's bringing you problems, and you're the best at solving it, but the pressure is non stop. So when you create the open door, and you create the 131, I've had a lot of relief from that pressure.

And Jay, the other thing is really helping people understand what the parameters of their position are, and empowering them to make the decisions. Do you really care what flavor birthday cake they order for John's birthday on Friday in the office? No, you really don't.

And we went another layer. We said everybody has a $50 automatic budget to send birthday cake to a client. And the problem leadership has a $250 minimum, and then anything after that they can bring to myself or the integrator.

So it's setting up those processes, those guardrails, that framework that empowers your team, and also, if your team truly understands your vision and how you're planning on getting to that vision, they don't need you to make the decision to tell them which direction to go. They know which direction to go.

Brooke, I think we've scaling law. We check mark. Everybody knows how awesome your content is in the book. If you're looking for an EOS implementer for a law. Firm Brooks, definitely your gal, and we've come to the time in the podcast the regular listeners, and I know you're one of them. We call these quick one liners or short snappers. First question that we ask all of our podcast listeners for over like 15 years is, tell me about an app or technique you use for personal productivity.

Oh, personal productivity. Yeah, that would be my calendar. If it's not calendared, it does not happen. And so work blocks as well. There are work blocks. My assistant knows that if she needs me to read a document and comment on it, it's in a slot on the calendar, because all the stuff that's not on the calendar ends up on a list that looks like this that gets fit in everywhere else. Yeah?

Well, guess what? I have one exactly the same. Yeah, we have to number 20, and then there's, there's other ones on the side. Uh huh. So yeah, no to all employees listening work blocks,

and especially for a visionary, because, you know that person that has 20 ideas every five minutes, we get distracted, and we will get into something like we'll discover something, we'll dig deep, and we'll go off down a rabbit trail, And if there's not something to help bring us back,

we're lost, and every new idea is the best new idea. So good. Okay, gonna make us a million dollars. You have a personal wellness and fitness routine? Do i Yes, ma'am. Do you

my personal wellness and fitness routine is actually, this is fascinating. This is new. I used to do intermittent fasting, and I just got back from vacation where I ate three sometimes four times a day because I was on a cruise, served tea and I didn't gain an ounce, and I'm like, I was on a ship, sitting in lectures most of the time, I wasn't doing anything. How did this work? And so had a discussion with a medical professional, and they said it's because you weren't doing intermittent fasting, your body wasn't going into starvation mode. So my new thing is I really am eating three small meals that are three might even small, small meals, three reasonably sized meals a day.

Portion control works like a charm. Next question, best business books.

Well, I'm going to go with scaling law

cheat code. See, there's two kinds of guests we have on 10 golden rules. One is the one who promotes their own book, and the other one who sucks up and says, Oh, the 10 golden rules of online marketing.

But I really

feeling law what's one book every law firm owner should read?

Oh, it's funny. I'm looking over at my my bookshelf that's over here, and there's certain authors that I love. Jim Collins is amazing. Gay Hendricks, the big leap. It is old, but it is good.

What's that about? Ah,

it's about how to get to the next level. It's about the things that hold you back. And it is an amazing book. It's how to take great leaps forward instead of incremental steps.

I love it. That's probably next on my to do list. He talks about what's called the upper limit problem. You hit this upper limit

and you can't go any higher. You can't do more, you can't make more. You can't be more. And he helps you break down the psychological barriers that are keeping you stuck there.

Fantastic blogs, podcasts and youtubes. What do you subscribe to? And when it hits your feed, you stop every other podcast and listen to,

I do not listen to very many podcasts, simply because, generally, when I stop moving and listen, I fall asleep, because I have two speeds, I have on and I have off. But the one thing that I do stop is every Wednesday, there's a newsletter that comes out from my British newspaper. Her about what the royal family has done that week, and man,

the world stops for me to read that. That's enjoyment. What's the latest over there? Oh my gosh,

the BBC used the wrong name for the Princess of Wales, and so they're apologizing this week.

Oh boy, and they're apologizing to the US president that they're in trouble, yeah, all right, NFL, or sports team, I am going to go with the TCU horn frogs. Nice. What's a great introduction for you? If we all think, Man, this Brooke is smart. Who should we introduce you to

I love attorneys who want more whether it's more money, more time, a bigger firm to take over the world, but they're just not satisfied with the status quo, and they are ready to do the work. Awesome.

I know a few of those. And the last last question, Where can people get in touch with you? To make that introduction,

I think the easiest way to get in touch with me is Brooke at calf cap.com. C, A, T, H, C, A, p.com,

Brook this was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for your time and your expertise.

Thanks, Jay and I can't wait to see you next month at your conference,

tgr, live growth strategies for law firms. All right, Brooke, we'll see you next month. See you then you.