[ Sound Effects ] Our next in-person mastermind is coming up this fall and we're heading to Vegas. We're kicking off this mastermind with an in-person tour at Zappos downtown Las Vegas campus, where you'll learn their strategies behind company culture, core values, employee engagement, and customer service. Looking outside the legal industry for business concepts and strategies allows you to gain fresh perspectives and innovative solutions that can be applied to improve and differentiate your firm's operations. Following the tour are the mastermind hot seats. Every attendee has the opportunity to dive deep into their business obstacles with their mastermind group and coach. We believe that nothing beats working on your firm in-person. So join us in Las Vegas on November 7th and 8th. This is your chance to break through barriers, spark new ideas, and accelerate your law firm's success. Limited spots are available. Visit maxlawevents.com for full event details and to grab your ticket today. [ Sound Effects ] Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast. The maximum lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and Tyson Matrix. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome. Let's do the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. I'm Jim Hacking and I'm Tyson Mutrix. What's up Jimbo? Oh, my friend. We're here for another great episode of Maximum Lawyer. I'm excited to be with you again. I'm looking forward to it. I was telling our guest, Tom, that I am sitting in a Walmart parking lot charging my truck. So it's a nice little adventure I'm having, but you want to introduce our guest? We can jump right in. Yeah. Well, so it's so great because this is one of those rare instances where I said, hey, let's have Tom on the show. And Becca said, Tyson said the same thing, we're already scheduling it. So I don't know that that's ever happened before. But our guest today, Tom Linthasty, he's the founder and CEO of the Law Practice Exchange. He helps lawyers through the next chapter of their legal career, whether it's succession planning, exit planning, or strategic growth through law firm acquisition. He's a leader in law firm sales, and he's helped develop a marketplace for people wanting to sell their law firms or buy law firms. Tom, welcome back. Yeah, thanks, Jim. Thanks, Tyson, for having me. And little do you know, of course, I just pinged each of you, right? And you just planted that message in your head of Tom for another podcast. No. Subliminal. That's right. That's right. No, it's great to be back and great to kind of do a refresh. Well, I think a lot's changed in the marketplace in the last couple of years. So look forward to discussing. So let's jump in with not quite that yet, but we'll get into that in a little bit. But what got you into this type of work because it's, I mean, it's not, I mean, completely outside the law, really, it's you're still somewhat within the law pretty like you have one solid foot, at least in the legal space, but what got you into this? Yeah, my story, Tyson really, as I tell everybody, you know, half jokingly, but mostly serious is jealousy. As a practicing attorney, CPA, I was sitting in the seat of a lot of, you know, your listeners and, you know, community. I was helping these other professional business owners like dentists, CPAs, doctors, insurance advisors, financial advisors. I was the lawyer sitting in the seat and they'd come to me with a structured deal and a dentist would say, yep, it's time to retire. I've got a buyer for my practice. They're, they're going to take over, pay me a million bucks. They're getting a bank loan for it and I'm going to stay on for a couple weeks and I'm going to be gone. And I'm like, that is tremendous. And then as I was building my own practice, it was really kind of the feeling of how do I do this? Right? How do I as a professional business owner, you know, do what these other professional business owners have accomplished. And so that really led me to start searching around of who in the marketplace or who was out there helping this marketplace for lawyers, who was, you know, transacting deals openly because that's a lot of what I saw was it's great if you can complete an internal sale or a succession. But for most lawyers, especially solo owned others, they may just not have that opportunity. So there needed to be a marketplace where you could really go and find your buyer. And really what I found out is nobody was. So that was a little over a decade ago. And then since then steadily through, you know, education promotion, you know, helping on transactions to just kind of build that out. But really that was it. It was, man, lawyers should be able to do this too. And selfishly, I wanted to be able to do it for my own firm. So when you began building your firm, did you do it with an eye towards someday being able to transition out of it and how did that impact the way you structured things? Yeah, I think the only smart thing I did, Jim, when I started my firm was I didn't name it after myself. And I don't think I really did that and, you know, with an eye towards exit. I just did it with an eye towards Len Festi, isn't the catchiest name in the book, right? Like the last name. And I did want, you know, there to be some market recognition outside of just, you know, me, right? And so I really didn't start it that way. I did start it with a plan for having succession, adding partners otherwise, but really not to build it to exit, right? And I think that really was triggered by the more I started doing law practice exchange, I had to really exit out of my own practice to do so. And that's really what motivated, you know, those different steps to kind of build out the succession plan and really implement so I could exit, but, you know, keep practicing just in a different world. All right. So let's get into the market. I want to, I am curious about the market. You teased that a little bit. What is the market like right now? We just had someone on, he's running a PI firm, they say that they're the fastest growing in the country. I don't know if that's true, but, and he was saying how, you know, in the future, there's going to be a massive consolidations, a lot like doctors and hospitals. With that, I'm curious what the markets like given what he said. The market's busy, especially compared to, you know, a couple of years ago when we talked, there was, you know, the steady push from me, but from the law practice exchange has been to build this marketplace, right? Get the word out there to lawyers that you can buy or sell law firms. And there's a good proven process to do it successfully. But I would tell you today, Tyson, it's the busiest, you know, we've ever seen it and it grows, you know, exponentially for the market. It's still very niche. We're not talking about being able to sell laundry mats, right? Or, you know, stock shares on the New York Stock Exchange or anything else. This is, you know, two lawyers for the most part. But personal injury and our planar firms are really leading the way because there is consolidation, but there is exit and succession and they're really changing a lot based on, I mean, you guys know this through your community, but the investments that they're making into marketing, into systems. And what we're seeing is some of the traditional players can't keep up. And so as, you know, the model kind of shifts to bigger personal injury, you know, other more strategic business operations, one, those are looking for growth and they look for growth through acquisition. So if you're a big PI firm in your state or multi-states, for you to go into a new location, a new geographic market, you definitely can. But you're spending from, you know, zero, you know, to build up for recognition. Much more of what we're seeing is acquiring a proven brand in that marketplace. And then, you know, maybe you want to integrate your brand over time, but you have case inventory. You have new leads and new clients and cases to work from in doing so. So personal injury is for sure leading the activity in the way, there's a lot of activity and noise coming out of Arizona based on personal injury and ABS in Arizona. But with other practices as well, we get, you know, on average five times as many buyer inquiries right now as we do sellers moving into the marketplace. Not all those buyers are ready. Part of our, you know, commitment is to help buyers get ready or, you know, some of them are interested and never will get to that point. Their own firms or their own lives aren't ready to really acquire. So they're not, you know, qualified at this point to do so. But the overall goal is to really generate that so we can make more matches and make that marketplace really move. Tom, why are you seeing more interest in buying and selling firms? Is it because a baby boomers retiring? Is it because people want to grow? What are the driving forces right now? I owe a lot of, I think, credit to groups like yours, Jim and Tyson. I mean, I really think from the buyer side, our buyers from a generation, if you want to think about it for the law practice exchange, we typically deal with, you know, different generations. On the seller side, we have the boomers. As you mentioned, Jim, we have some others younger, right, some Xers that have decided to get out and, you know, otherwise. But for the most part, we have the boomers and they're entering the selling, you know, process at a slower rate. But on the buyer side, we have a lot of law firm owners, some boutique firms that have built better systems. They want to build a better business. And I will tell you they're more entrepreneurial and probably a little bit more risk tolerant than most of the other lawyers out there in how they're going to do things. And so as they build this business, they're looking for growth and acquisition or growth into a new market or growth into a new practice area or a large book of business. For them, it's something they can do, but they can do it because, you know, they're not the owner and the attorney sitting in that seat doing everything. They're the owner manager and they've really built themselves into a better system. So overall, that's a lot of why I think we see more buyers. They're coming from that next generation of lawyers who have worked with, you know, minds, coaching groups, others, or independently, they're just focused more on this is a law firm, but it's a business. Some of our sellers have built great businesses, but they really kind of, you know, worked into it over a 30, 40 year career. They didn't focus on really building those systems out. It just kind of happened as a necessity for growth. So is there a certain size of firm or a certain caseload that you're looking for that is right to be acquired? Because I'm really curious about that. Or is basically anything on the table, if you're a solo, you got 10 cases you could sell. To me, like there seems to be, there has to be like some sort of, sort of like sweet spot. Yeah, I think the sweet spot is if you're a personal injury attorney doing 500 cases a year, you've got a good brand in your community, whether it's a major metro or otherwise. But, you know, you've got a good brand that's generating, right, a good marketing platform. That's a good place to be. Once you get above 1,000 cases a year, it's a lot easier transaction. It's a bigger transaction, typically, right. But it's an easier transaction to do because you've got a lot more history, 1,000 cases, you can really take, you know, past case settlement, you know, times those 1,000 cases, things kind of normalized a little bit more for you. So you know, at 1,000 cases, that becomes more interesting to those looking for, I need the player in the market, right? Or less than that, or even less than 500, if you have 10 cases, there's probably somebody out there, but they're really looking to, you know, buy you in an of council and affiliation on those 10 cases and other things that may be referred to you in the next few years. There's definitely a purchase transaction there, but there's not, you know, significant good will value there. The real value comes as the firm grows and scales and builds, you know, a lot of firm entity value as compared to, you know, personal brand value. Do most deals go with each side having a representative like you, or do you sometimes, I don't know if you ever do a dual agency model, how does that work? Yeah, absolutely. So typically, because this is still a fairly niche market, I mean, you guys know there's some other players, you know, our focus has been building the marketplace and really helping make matches those different opportunities, but we typically find ourselves gem dedicated to the deal versus the seller or the buyer. And you know, recently we kind of shift around our model because even when we were repping the seller like, hey, hire us to sell your firm, we would end up doing a lot of work for the buyer as well, because they didn't have representation, or, you know, there's no buy side law firm business broker out there to do that to help them. So maybe they're dealing with an attorney or a CPA, but that attorney or CPA maybe has never gone through this before, you know, for a law firm. So we've really kind of shifted around different things where hopefully we can help add value to the deal if it's meant to happen or not meant to happen from a consulting side. Because we do believe, you know, both need help, the seller, of course, needs help and the buyer needs help, the other thing that allows us to do in that middle position, if we've matched and help with deal structure negotiation, just kind of mediation, right? And sometimes that's, you know, emotional counseling to the seller like, I know you're saying this, but I think that's an emotional response because you're just afraid of retiring, right? You're afraid of exiting your firm. That's the number one reason we don't have more sellers moving into the marketplace is because emotionally they don't, a lot of lawyers don't know what they would do if they weren't a lawyer, right, of that generation or otherwise. And so there's emotional barriers or excuses or delays that come up through that. And even during the deal discussions, those pop up and so we can be there to really help the seller, but then also tell the buyer like, look, this is what they're dealing with. They're trying to process a loss of control, a fear over financial stability, a, you know, whatever else and really work with the parties to see. Is there a deal to be had? And if there's not, that's a good place to stop and kind of exit as well because these are deals that we tell everybody, they're transition based where buyer and seller are going to have to work together afterwards, mostly, right? And you want to make sure that the deal is truly going to be a win-win. If it's not, then somebody's going to resent that, not give the efforts and the transition plan afterwards, right? And it just, it may work, but it's just not going to work as well as if it can really come in and both parties are vested and they fit and they feel good about the transition. So I'm really curious, so I, let's say I come to you, I say, listen, Tom, I've got, I'm turning a thousand cases a year. I want out. I want a clean break. I don't want to be, I don't want to be of counsel. I just want to sell the firm. I guess what can I, what can I expect like the paperwork that I need to get together for you? Like, what, like, what does all that look like? I'm really curious, like, what's the setup look like? How long does this process take? Things like that. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things, Tyson, that we really changed is, you know, we invested in, you know, software to build out what we call the marketplace, which openly allows you, if you wanted to do that, you could go now and create an account, create a listing, right? For confidential, you know, opportunities, explore with buyers, everything else. But that really just helps with the matching function, like finding, you know, potentials that are out there and discussing what we would then do is really say, look, you need to know what the value is, Tyson, you've got this firm, what, what is the value? What should you be asking for? What should you be expecting for it in price? But also, what kind of payment terms are you going to get? Your payment terms on a thousand PI strong brand, all the metrics of where leads come from versus a hundred PI, which is referral, and you really don't know where the leads come from, the payment terms, not just the price, the payment terms are going to vary greatly on that. But typically, when you start with the valuation, you're starting with, you know, profit and loss statements, tax returns, payroll summaries, right? You're starting with those financial reports, and then we're really going into what we call, you know, background information to determine where do you sit in the market, like the key value drivers for us, like there's market ranges on multiples, right? There's certain caps that you're always going to hit, but where in a range does your firm stand? How strong are you? How weak are you? Right? You know, do you have a website that says you practice every single practice area in the world? When really all you do is two things, well, that's not a great brand to put out there. It's a tough one for buyers to see and everything else. You know, if you don't know where your clients come from, that's a negative value driver. Right? Like those different things that we'll really work with in the valuation. Valuation we tell everybody is the first step because it lets you know what's possible. If you get a high valuation and strong purchase terms, then you may be motivated to sell and you can communicate to a buyer on what you want, whether that's an internal buyer, like looking at an associate who you want to have you buy out or an external. The other thing is what we've seen with a lot of our personal injury is they get to a certain size that internal candidates really, they've outgrown that. The value is so significant that really they have to look to external for that consolidation that your previous guests may have talked about anything else because they've. Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone and it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guest work out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We've been working with them for over a year and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on and the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long-term commitments tying you down, so what are you waiting for? To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit RiseUpMedia.com/ MaxLaw, and rise is spelled with a Z. RiseUpMedia.com/MaxLaw. It's gotten so big, you know, one of their associates or long-term senior non-equity partners potentially can't afford it, even with private equity funding, anything else in there, or doesn't want to take on the risk, right? They'd rather partner with another firm or another group of attorneys to do so. So we see a lot of those different transactions. But it really does start with the valuation, which hopefully gives you a benchmark of your value but also where that comes from, like why, right? Why do I sit here in this market value, this price? Why is my firm low? Why is it high? Otherwise? And then really, our goal is, what do I do with it? Like, if I have a price, great, but what do I really do with it? Who would be my buyers, right? Should it be an internal? Should it be a firm that I'm going to merge with? Should I look at a true marketplace? I got an awesome PI firm, 1,500 cases revolving everything else. What kind of marketplace buyer is out there for me and what kind of term should I expect? Have there been deals that you thought would never get to the finish line or have there been deals that you thought, oh, this one's a slam dunk that unraveled. What makes cases or deals fall apart? Emotions, right? I think emotions and fear really is the biggest deal killer besides time. I mean, time definitely, the more time it takes to move forward, the more time it takes to produce a financial report that the buyers ask for, all of those things can kill a deal. But to answer your question, Jim, yeah, absolutely. There have been deals that we're like, great, we'll close this one and it's stretched on and due diligence for nine months because they used a different bank, the bank took forever, asked for all of this different stuff, right? And the parties, you can just see them getting worn down, right? Just getting worn down from that. But surprisingly, they stick it out because they both are committed to the opportunity and they do get that deal done. And then there's others that, of course, we're like, there's no way this is going to work. I tell everybody as much as lawyers sometimes can go to, you know, right away, give me an idea. I'm going to tell you five ways that that idea is not going to work. Like naturally for lawyers, we go to thinking why it can't work. That creativity can be used in a powerful way. And they come up with structures that maybe we didn't even talk about, but that works for them, right? And it'll work for that deal that we really said we thought was dead, but they've come up with an alternative that really does work. So the creativity of the lawyers that are involved, sometimes that can be a negative. But a lot of times that can be a positive. I think the biggest thing is just being having reasonableness in the process. And that's where, again, just reverting back of this is why we say everything starts with valuation. If you jump into a market and say, hey, I got a thousand cases. I think my firm's good. I heard this Len Festi guy say of multiple ranges, this, this is what I want for my firm. But you've got a 10% profit margin, you way overpay your people, you just have some high risk of departure, some other issues. Your case inventory is strong now, but your intake looks really bad. So you're not replenishing that inventory. Well, then your firm's not worth that much. But if you jump in and that's what you expect without having the knowledge of really what is the value, that's where kind of that reasonableness issue pops up and kills deals, right? And I always go back to reasonableness, hopefully is just a lack of knowledge, because this is a very unique area, right? Not everybody buys or sells a law firm, you know, every day, most only once, potentially although we've got some good cereal buyers out there. So that's a great thing. But for most, it's really give me the knowledge, hopefully if they accept that as this is what I can expect, or this is what the process is going to look like, and they can, you know, kind of ride along, then they'll get the deal done. So why does it matter if you've got employees that are going to leave, or why does it matter if you've got a high turnover, why does it matter if the intake team's a mess, if you're going to end up absorbing all of the leads anyways, and you're going to be taking over the intake process? Employees are assets. They can be liabilities, but to most buyers, right, they're assets, meaning, you know, we're going through a deal right now. It's a very impressive firm, everything else. They've got a workforce of 300 employees, everything else. Our sellers are concerned about, hey, we want to make sure these employees stay. Our buyers are concerned about, hey, we want to make sure these employees stay, right? It's usually a mutual concern to really keep the employees in play, because if it's been working right, then they're truly an asset, right? They're an asset to the deal, because if you're an owner and you're going to exit, you're going to sell your firm, and you're going to maybe transition for six, 12 months, 18 months afterwards, who does the buyer really look to to make sure the work still gets done? Who does the buyer look to to make sure that, you know, they know the systems or they know the clients or the referral sources, depending on practice area, like personal injury can be a little bit different, but, you know, for like a state planning, for real estate, a lot of those are the non-attorneys know the referral sources, like the realtors and the advisors and everything, way more than, you know, the actual owner attorney, and so they can really be a true asset to making the transition work successfully, and they have a lot of the knowledge, and, you know, if there's disruption, whether it's, you know, paralegal's non-attorneys, but when it's attorneys that depart, you know, that can just, you know, spin off competition, anything else from that side. Most of our buyers actually want to come in, and if they look and see there's some good senior associates or others, the number one question is, would they be open to being, you know, potentially a non-equity partner? Somebody that we can really make is our market partner, you know, in this transition that we can kind of promote, maybe they don't have equity, right? They're not taking ownership of the firm, but hopefully they're going to take on a little bit increased role of responsibility. Not all of it. We're not asking to do that, which the seller may have looked to them previously to do, but they're going to take on enough to help the buyer and become part of that buyer team, which, you know, hopefully works. The buyer has a good knowledge source there in the market to kind of continue things. They're taking on a lot of the management, integrating their systems, but to that, you know, employee that's moved up as well. Hopefully, they have more financial opportunity, more growth opportunity within the buyer regime without taking on all the risk that they would have through, you know, ownership acquisition themselves. Are there things that people get hung up when going through the deal process that they shouldn't focus on, and are there things that people don't highlight in their attention, but they should be spending more time thinking about? Absolutely. So the first thing they should not focus on is knowing what things are going to look like at step 10, if you're only at step one, right? It's really, again, it's something as, you know, lawyers here, right? We want to know. Like, we want to plan. What is, what is step 10 going to look like? And just as an example of that, Jim, a lot of sellers come in and say, you know, great, what type of buyer, right? For my firm. And you kind of advise them, they should be open to all, which means you should be open to a law firm that's going to come in and treat it as a merger. You should be open to an experienced, you know, individual attorney that's going to come from, you know, in-house counsel or from another firm that wants to come over and really be your internal successor. So you're going to rename yourself as a partnership and kind of transition that way. You should be open to a boutique firm, you know, in another town that's going to say, hey, we want to buy you, right? And we'll exit you out and do that. So all these different options, but it's really hard for attorneys. They want to know what step 10 is going to look like, what that is going to be painted as. And sometimes it does vary depending on the buyer. So what I'd say is have knowledge in making the decisions at the time you need, knowing what hopefully the end goal is and what you're working towards. But the fear of just, I need to know what it looks like. Now, the market's going to tell you a lot of times, right? Does it take six months to sell your firm or, you know, two years? The market, you know, potentially would tell you, you know, what those opportunities are out there and, you know, how that's going to work. And the other thing I would say from the standpoint of, you know, really working through is there's a real fear of our sellers of loss of control. Like, I've run this firm, I've owned this firm, right? And I think it's a pretty standard entrepreneur. I don't think this is just to lawyers, but it's, you know, I've done things the way I've wanted. Right or wrong. Like I walk in, I control my schedule. If I want to work seven days a week, I work seven days a week. If I want to do this, but the best story I've had with that is, you know, if you can get over that there's going to be a solid transition plan and hopefully you found the right buyer, that loss of control also comes with benefits. And you know, as a story to that, we had a plaintiff attorney, you know, that we had really helped with and he told me many times as we went through it, like I'm really, you know, I'm really worried about this. You know, I liked my control, my fiefdom, everything else. This gives me pause. This gives me pause, but we made our way through. And as we got through, when we closed the deal, you know, it was two days later or something, I, you know, had them on the phone, just checking in to see how things were going. And he said, you know what was weird? You know how I was so worried about loss of control, right? You know, that loss of control, I didn't always, I didn't also realize that it came with the benefit of it ain't my problem anymore, right? Like there were certain things he's like, I woke up and immediately thought payroll isn't my responsibility, right? So I don't have control over like, you know, processing payroll, but it's also not my obligation to meet payroll. And it's, you know, these different things that it comes with more freedoms. And that's really it, right? As an owner, sure, we have lots of control. We can create our own freedoms. But when you become a non-owner and you're on your exit path, you gain a lot more and you gain control, hopefully, over more of your personal life that you probably didn't have or your personal time. So I would say those aspects definitely, Jim. I'm sure that by you saying all that, there's several people like kind of dreaming of that day. They're very interested. So I'm going to give them the URL. It's the lawpracticeexchange.com is the, that's correct URL, correct? Yep. Yep. The lawpracticeexchange.com. And again, they can go there, the marketplace is an account creation, allows you hopefully to just learn and when the time is to, you know, explore finding a buyer or seller or to transact. And our team is always there. So that's what I tell people is, you know, our goal is to support, just like you guys have done for your community. But our goal is to really support on, you know, the buy sell transactional side. There's questions. We're there to help with answers when needed. Yeah. I was playing around with the website a little bit. It's a really cool website. At a minimum, I would say everyone should go check it out just to check it because it's a really good website. So, check it out. Who knows? Maybe you might not be curious now, but you might be curious in a couple of years about it. So, check it out. All right. We were going to get to our tips and hacks of the week before I do that though. I want to remind everyone, join us in the big Facebook group, go to maximum lawyer on Facebook and join us there. And then if you want to join us in the guild, we have a lot of great people inside the guild that are always willing to share their expertise. MaxLawGuild.com. And while you're listening to the rest of this episode, if you don't mind giving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps us spread the love to all the lawyers around the world really. I said, country last episode and it's really, we have people all over the world that listened to this. So, we'd love it. Love it if you'd give us a real. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week? I do have a hack of the week, but I actually have one more question for Tom, and I'll give my hack and then I'll ask the question. So, apropos to our discussion today, you know, we've spoken a lot on maximum lawyer about one of my favorite books, Built to Sell, which if you haven't read, you should. It's great. A great way to focus on the things you can control to get ready to sell. But there's a podcast too. There's over 450 episodes of Built to Sell podcast. So, if you haven't checked that out, check that out. My question, Tom, is, have you ever had someone come to you wanting to sell their practice and ended up buying someone else's practice, or have you ever had someone come to you wanting to buy a practice and ending up selling a practice? Because that seems like something I would do. Yeah, absolutely, I think we have a lot of people in different stages. I tell everybody, it probably depends on the day right now of, are you a seller or buyer? If you're having a really good day, then you're a buyer, right? You're looking for growth, everything seems to be functioning really well. And maybe if you're having a bad day or just feeling a little exhausted, you're more of a seller. So, to answer your question, yes, we've had a lot come in that said, hey, I think I'm interested in selling, and then they don't, right? They don't move forward because that's not really what they want, they're just maybe having a bad day, or, right? They thought they were going to be done to do something else, and they're reinvigorated. And sometimes that's the coolest part is, if you have a great firm and you're not really done yet, but you can contribute by acquiring other brands, really seeing that process as it goes, yeah, it can be an awesome experience. And to your point, Jim, built to sell was one of the things that, it's one of the books that I read that was, you know, for me, such a simple read and such a great story to just kind of impact and say, you know, build a business, right? That is a business. That's not just you. It's not an extension of you or anything else. And so that was definitely one of the motivating factors for me in starting the law practice exchange. All right, Tom, we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack of the week. It could be a book. It could be a podcast. It could be a quote, whatever you can think of. So what you got for us? Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, again, built to sell, you know, is out there as a tremendous book to go read. I know you guys have talked about traction. To me, that's different stages, right, of where you are in your law firm operations or anything else. But you know, from a podcast side and just totally off the wall side, there is a book called die with zero. Die with zero. Have you guys kind of gone through that before? But you know, I won't spoil it for you, but for those really looking at, you know, where do I control my life and my experiences, right, in my being controlled by my business, in my really participating and what does the future look like for me, my family, everything else. The number one thing that we get sellers telling us that they want to sell their firms for is to spend time with their grandkids. And usually it's because they have been six, seven days a week in their firm and hadn't spent time with their kids as much as they wanted to. And now they regret that and they wanted to vote as much time as they can to, you know, their grandkids who, of course, grandkids are way better than their kids. They're perfect, right? But overall, die with zero. It's, you know, a pretty simple read, good, you know, audiobook to kind of carry forward. But I think really helps put perspective in, why are you here and what is that purpose and how should you really live life under that balance? Love it. Good lesson to you. I like to hear those stories. For me, my tip of the week is I discovered, so I saw someone posting on X about like these seven free classes that MIT had. And then it redirected this link to an app. It's called XED, so yeah, or I'm sorry, edX, EDX, which it's, it's got a bunch of free courses, some you got to pay for it, but a bunch of free courses though, like from universities all over the country. So from marketing to coding, you name it, they're, they're free on, on this app. So I want to share that with everybody, edX, it's, it's a really cool app. So check it out. Tom, thanks so much, pleasure having you on again. It's, it's, it's cool just hearing everything you're doing. And for everyone that needs a reminder, check out the lawpracticeexchange.com. Thanks Tom. Thanks guys. Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximumlawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time. Before you go, have you heard Jim and Tyson talk about the guild on the podcast or in the Facebook group, if not, you're missing out on some really exciting things happening with guild members and their law firms. The guild includes a community, accountability, trainings, group coaching and in-person events like our quarterly masterminds. Inside you'll gain support, tap into a network of connections and continue learning, a common theme among successful entrepreneurs. Investing in a community is like the self-care of business ownership, surrounding yourself with other people who get it is crucial when you're creating a rock solid foundation to build your business on. One that's strong enough to withstand setbacks, transitions and growth. So head to maximumlawyer.com/theguild to join now and get started today.
