Why do reclines call Dr. Jean the results queen? The name speaks for itself. Dr. Jean has been helping business owners achieve and exceed their goals for over 20 years. And now, she wants to help you get more results to your business and in your life. In fact, her mission is to leave you better than she found you. Join her as she dives deep into the world of business and entrepreneurship to provide you with actionable strategies and valuable insights and compelling stories that will propel you to greater success and ultimate results. Get ready to take notes, because it's time for getting results with Dr. Jean the results queen. Hi, it's Dr. Jean the results queen and I'm super excited today to talk about my with my guest, Jim Pusanaski. Jim is actually my favorite lawyer and for those who I work with, I know he still he's my favorite lawyer. So with that said, as we always do, welcome Jim to our fabulous podcast. How do you promote your other lawyers? If I'm your favorite lawyer, well, just you are my favorite lawyer. What can I say? I appreciate that. It's true. It's one of the reasons why you made an answer to the podcast and maybe the other ones will become my favorite. Who knows? But I'm just telling you know, we're really here on this podcast. So as we always do as once we are in directions, I'd like to ask you, how did you get where you are today? It's been a little bit of a, you know, fits and starts with it. So, you know, we, we opened up our office in 2008. I had two other partners, Steve and Fred, and the reality is that, you know, I was the young one of the group, right? I didn't necessarily have much in the way of a book of business at the time and was beholden to really the work that they were bringing in as I went out and I developed a book of business. But their primary book was, you know, high volume, low rate work. So we were really scrambling and really working on trying to keep up with the material that was there and we didn't have the resources to, to really go out and expand, bring in other attorneys. And so we were, we were spending a lot of time working in the business instead of on the business and, you know, Fred and Steve had developed that book of business over the course of, you know, 15 or 20 years. So they were, you know, very committed to that area of work, where I was largely looking to expand into kind of the opposite realm, right? I was looking to expand into lower volume, higher rate, and allow us to go out and develop more during the day opposed to always, you know, having to work 10, 12 hour days to keep up with the material that we had. And so, you know, kind of the, the short version of that is, as Fred left our office in 2012. And I, you know, so now there's two of us and some associates, you know, doing the same volume work. So it's, it's not actually getting better. It may have been actually getting a little worse than, but in the interim, I was out networking and marketing and building a reputation in the space of working with businesses, working with them on their, their personnel and advising them on day to day issues, as well as handling litigation for them, right? And so that was, you know, what I would call, you know, full rate work for lack of a better term, opposed to, you know, insurance and municipal cut rate work. So, I lost my largest client, at this point, it was maybe three or four years ago, accounted for, you know, almost $300,000 for the business. You know, it's about a third of my work, you know, so I mean, it was a, it was a sizable loss. I saw it coming, I did everything I could to avoid it, but, you know, the clients change. It happens. But in reality, it was the best thing that could happen for me and my business, because we were spending so much time servicing these clients that, that resulted in now, I have to go out and get more work, I have to go out and develop a new business. And I had already laid the foundation of having a reputation in the industry, such that, you know, I was able to, you know, really build on that and fill that space that I had been using to service that client with higher paying clients and marketing at the same time. So while I lost a third of my business on that day, I mean, it didn't all happen one day. It was a, you know, there was a transition period. It didn't all go like that done. But I knew new work wasn't coming in. So over the course of the year that they transitioned out, I still grew my book of business by about three to five percent. So with a 30 percent loss, I grew at three to five percent year over year. So I think that that really set the stage for what I've been able to do over the past few years, and that you continue to build off of that and, you know, market yourself and bring in the clients that you're really looking to, to formulate a relationship with that. And in the business community that we work in, you know, the client is coming back to you time and time again. You want you to build that relationship, they're calling with new problems because they have employees and employees come with all kinds of issues that can develop during any given day. Right. So that's one nice thing is that we don't, you know, when I bring in a client, we're able to build a long-term relationship with them and, you know, build that trusting relationship with them. So I really enjoy that piece of it. That's kind of the short version of how I got here. I mean, there's a lot more details that we can delve into, but that's kind of the quick introductory version of the book. Yeah. And what kind of law do you practice? So we're labor and employment attorneys. We work with businesses dealing with their employees, and then often we'll work with the company when they start to realize that, you know, they have contracts and other, you know, business foundational pieces that need some assistance. So we'll work with them on some of the commercial issues, but most of our clients are coming to us because they realize that they are struggling with some personnel matter and a crisis, so to speak, that needs to be addressed usually in short order because when a, and when an employee issue crops up, it often sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. And it is the crisis to your and needs to be addressed right now. So often we're brought in in very short order to address those issues. And once we kind of calm the water, so to speak, on those types of things, then, you know, we're able to start having a more global conversation with the businesses to itself with regard to the personnel with regard to its contractual foundation. And we also do some reputation management, which is to say, businesses run into a challenge of having negative reviews online and, and, you know, in other spaces as well, which is very detrimental to the business. So we have worked with a number of companies to address those reputational pieces. It's included litigation, but sometimes we're able to negotiate resolutions to those without getting into a litigation realm. And I've actually argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court related to those issues. So that that was an exciting moment for me. Oh, yeah. That's a totally exciting moment. Yeah. All right. I have a bunch of lawyer questions to ask. One, the lawyers not think that they run businesses. Why do they like they, they just think they have lawyers. The reality is, is that you run a company. Why do they not act that that way? Well, I think that it's very easy for the lawyer as they're coming out of law school and, you know, begin to work for firms to take the work that's on their desk, work on the file, and expect somebody else to show up with the next file, the next project. And they never are taught the business components of it. What does it take to go out and find a client? What does it take to understand the profitability of clients? What does it take to, you know, what is our overhead, like associates will hear in some firms that there's the one third one, you know, a third of your billings go to your salary, a third go to overhead, a third go to profit, but they don't really understand that. And you know, why is that what, you know, it's because nobody's really bringing them into the fold to explain to them what it is that is required for business development. And I was consulting with a colleague of mine from law school and she's over a very large firm here in New Jersey. And, you know, she's, you know, she's very experienced, she's a partner at the firm. And I asked her, I was like, well, what is your billing rate? Well, you know, what does it take to, you know, bring you guys on? And she didn't have answers to some of the most what I would consider some of the most simple terms of being engaged by a client. And, you know, if I'm going to, you know, refer that firm for that particular project and to the person that I know over there, you know, I expect to, I expect them to have the authority to be able to engage a client, to, to quote a rate, to review a bill, to understand why you need to charge at a certain rate. What is, what's your profit break even point within the firm? These are that nature. I just don't think that in larger firms, anybody's having those conversations. They may not be having those conversations with, with even department chairs, you know, and or if they do, the department chairs aren't relaying that information to people lower down. All they are hurt, all they hear is, you must bill 1,800 hours, 2,000 hours, 2,200 hours. And don't understand really the background of any of why that is, why is that the driving force? I love that. So you really do have to understand why you're in business. And then why do lawyers hate doing new business development so much? I mean, they just like they're like, oh, and how do they learn how to do it? Well, I know how they learn. They hire us, but with that said, it was self serving for the moment. Well, why do they hate doing it? You know, I, I think people think that they're selling themselves and you're taught in law school, right or wrong that, you know, this is a profession, you know, we're noble and we, you know, we're, we don't, we don't go out and, and sell our services. Um, I think a again, it's easier to do work that's put on your desk for you opposed to going out and finding the work. But I will tell you that there is nothing more euphoric than having somebody call you up and say, I want to hire you. I would rather do that than, you know, sit down and, you know, write a brief or, you know, review discovery for litigation or whatever the next thing is and an accountant friend of mine referred me a case many years ago, and he said, you never get tired of being referred a case. And it's true. I mean, it's candidly that the client development part is the fun part. I'm the one going to the Gulf of that I'm the one going to the cocktail events. I'm the one going to all of these things and building relationship and I'm not selling my services. I'm getting to know people and I think people call me because they like me. And I think that they can tell from the conversations that we have that, you know, I'm knowledgeable in my field and, you know, I'm a specialist in my field and, and I think lawyer spends too much time, you know, lawyering the problem so to speak, right. You know, I had a client that came to me a couple of years ago and they had a business attorney that she would run problems. The client would run problems past the attorney and the attorney would just say, oh, here's how we can litigate this, right? Let's build the defenses. Let's, you know, let's let's go on the offensive with it, opposed to saying, all right, what do we need to get to? What is the end result we want? How do we get there in the least, you know, least resistant path that we can find? How do we get to? Yes. I had a law school professor that there's a famous book about negotiations called getting to yes, and my law school professor had worked for a New York firm and he said, the most contentious partner that he worked for had that book on his shelf. And he was just like, it was really amazing that, you know, this guy, that was really his mindset. Only he had this, you know, contentious personality that he used to get there. Like he would, you know, use that as a negotiating tool, but in reality, he was trying to get to yes, because the end of the day, even litigation settles, 95% of it's going to settle somewhere along the way. You need to find a way to get there, but you know, we're getting off on a bit of a tangent with this. But, you know, why do they want to visit develop because again, they're not caught. What is the benefit of it? How are you going to benefit, and there's so much pressure on them to bill excess a number of hours? I was dealing with an associate years ago on a case, and I asked them how many hours you need to bill, and it was like 2,200 was the requirement. I've killed myself years and didn't hit 2,200 hours, you know, it's an outrageous number. And I know of other firms where it's discouraged. They only want, you know, certain management level partners bring them to work. We don't want you bringing in, you know, the smaller cases along the way. We only want the partners who are responsible for business development to bring them to work, and you will work on their stuff. So it's actually discouraged, and I think it's to the detriment of those firms. I agree with that, because this is what you're teaching people to eat a fish for a day as opposed to a fish for a lifetime, and imagine if everyone instead of having 2,200 billable hours had time to do business development and do billable hours. Right? What would happen with that if that was the case? Let's think about that for a moment. Right. And I mean, if we go back to 2008 when, you know, financial crisis happened, law firms were laying associates off because they didn't have the work. You know, a story that I was told by a judge that I used to work with, he had a friend who had one major client, and it was Lehman Brothers, and that client went away, and so now everybody's looking around. Now, take that scenario and we've taught all of the associates underneath to go out and build a book of business of $250, $400,000. For that firm, it's small potatoes, but if everybody has a small book of business, they would have at least covered their overhead while that partner, you know, maybe he needs to go out and, you know, find another whale to bring in like a Lehman Brothers or somebody like that, and then they can, you know, buoy everything up, oppose delaying everybody off. We were able to, you know, just stay in the store and we had lower profits in those years, but everybody was still working and everybody was able to maintain it, but when only a few people are going to do the business development, then you're beholden to, you know, those clients, and as I said, you know, I lost a client that was a third of my billies. What does that firm do when, you know, that is your, you know, your circumstance. You don't have anything to fall back on to, nor do you have the skill set to fall back to it. Which then leads me back to lawyers need to think about their firms as running a company. Right, so you run on EOS, I know that. They do. I know. What makes EOS? I know you were skeptical when you started running on EOS. What makes EOS perfect for law firms to start implementing into their firms so they can start running like a company, a business. Well, I think the first thing that needs to happen is that the management team needs to understand all of the various aspects of it. I've been managing the firm since we opened in 2008 and, you know, I understand that you have sales service, finance, and, you know, all of the components that run under it. But I certainly have had, I have failed at it as well, it's not getting the people around me to understand what was impacted by all of those things. You know, what do we need to bring in at any given month to break even, to make a profit? What are the rates that we need to charge to be able to do that? How many new clients do we need to develop? What are the, you know, what are the things that we need to look at moving forward? And I also think that one of the keys that EOS brought to us was we've always had a long list of what I'll call punch list items. We need to get these things done, right? They're just kind of sitting out there. And, you know, we empowered one of my staff members to, you know, to start working on those things and hold us accountable to getting them done so that, you know, you start taking those things off the list. And I sit on a managing partner roundtable where we talk about things and there was a session not that long ago where everybody's saying, "Here's our punch list. I just can't get through these things." And I said, "I don't have that punch list anymore. It's gone." So you've taken all that noise off of your desk and by empowering people to allow you to do, you know, to move forward with those things, make a decision, execute, move on to the next thing. And finally resolve them and then identify what is, what's your punch list items for the next, you know, 30, 60, 90 days. Get those off your desk because they end up consuming energy even if you don't realize how much energy they're consuming and that's taking away from business development and servicing clients. Interesting. But why, okay, but you sit in the managing roundtable. How come the managing partners aren't going, "Yeah, we should be running a better business." Does it, does it, does it get them in their own way? I can't answer that, I can't answer that because I think that, you know, I think there's some old school mentality that continues to permeate the industries to how does a law firm operate and, you know, it's, you know, partners bring in the work and give it to associates. We bill it out and the managing partner has to deal with all the headaches and, you know, it's a very inefficient way of doing things. And you know, even though, you know, you hear, when I was at the Bar Association conference a couple of weeks ago, there was a managing partner, you know, forum and, you know, they talked about how, you know, you can, as a managing partner, just get sucked into all of these things and all of a sudden it digs up all of your time. And so they've failed to, you know, empower some of the lower people to just deal with an issue. You know, I heard, I don't remember which one it was, but one of the presidents of the United States said, "It's only the hard question to make my desk," right? So you need to empower the people below you to make decisions, execute, move forward. And so that only the hard decisions are getting to the managing partner. Delegate out the work that, you know, you need to be aware of, but don't need to be involved in. You know, allow yourself to work at a 30,000 foot level with insurance renewals, you know, because you don't need to be in the weeds of every aspect of that. But then identify the things that you need to be, you know, very involved in. I've seen too many businesses fail, not as attorneys, but, you know, in every sector because the people running it were involved directly in their finances. They didn't understand the money coming in, the money going out. They didn't understand what was costing them money, where they could trim the fat. Law firms are notorious for bringing in, you know, outside people, giving them these big, sweetheart deals, and then they don't, then they don't perform. But we've just spent a ton of money on bringing this practice area in, and now we've lost money on it. And, you know, it becomes hugely problematic because either they're not doing their due diligence on the group coming in, or they didn't put kickers in to assure that that money came in before they gave those bonuses, or however they structured it. So you really need to be cognizant of the finances of the business, and that's, you know, the only way you can do that is make sure sales are strong, service is stronger than the money shows up. For someone who said he couldn't answer the question, I think he just did a darn good job, to be perfectly honest. Just saying. It's interesting because you really do think like a business owner, and lawyers, a lot of lawyers just don't. How did you make the transition? I don't know if it was a transition for me. When we opened up, you know, I took on the managing role. I was, as I pointed out, before I was the youngest of the group, and I, we had maybe a four-month lead time to going out on our own. And I put a, you know, I put a business plan together. I literally bought a book, read it, most of it at least, and, you know, it's structured a business plan out. And many of the things that I do today were in the original business plan. I may not have been successful at implementing it as early on as I would have liked, but the core foundational piece was there. I think there was also, you know, so, you know, I was always looking at, you know, what's the break-even point? How much do we need to bring it, you know, to, and how much profit do we want to make, and, you know, anticipate it, you know, things out. You know, and, you know, to what extent does it make sense to start bringing on associates and having other people come in and start doing the work, you know, when does, how much work do you need them to do to actually break-even or be profitable, so on and so forth. And, you know, to what extent is, you know, taking, taking a loss on something okay because you're going to, you know, use that time period to build on something else, and, you know, you're going to, it's going to pay dividends later, you know, you know, you're always doing risk assessments. I think lawyers are notoriously in business and in advising clients, risk adverse. And so I think that can be, I think that can be problematic for that. I think you need to be willing to take on risks to, to run any business, whether it's a law firm or otherwise. I agree a whole lot, wholeheartedly on that. Do you think it's sometimes ego gets in the way from lawyers running their companies like businesses? Well, I think lawyers, egos, get in the way of just about everything. Well, I think that, you know, a lawyers don't go to business school. Can I name a single lawyer with an MBA? Even though when I went to school there, you could get a joint MBA JD degree. So yeah, I don't know of any that, you know, that have the boat. So I think running a business, running a business is different than practicing law. And you know, they don't, you know, they don't think of it in terms of, you know, how do we, how do we operate things as a business? What do we need to do to grow the business out? How are we going to model this in a certain fashion? There are firms that I am aware of that I watch them grow and I see who they're bringing on. And I'm like, I don't, I don't understand their business model. Is it to have more lawyers in so that we're a 50% firm opposed to, you know, 20% firm? Or is there systematic growth that they're looking to do? They're bringing in specific areas of work that they want. So I'm not, I'm not sure if there's a plan or not. I'm not involved in those firms, but from the outside looking, yeah, it doesn't look like there's a plan and that I find that interesting. So, you know, I think there's, that's an ego. I think that's an ego thing where we just want to be the largest New Jersey law firm. We want, you know, we want that to be our banner. So yeah, I do think ego can, can get in the way of it. Yeah, I'd rather have a small firm and be super profitable than a large firm that's not making any money, right? Yeah. So interesting, the, the managing partner round table that I'm with did an analysis and concluded that, you know, despite larger firms saying that we, we can reduce overhead costs. What they actually found was that the larger firms had higher overhead costs than the smaller firms. So the smaller firms really can be more dynamic, more cost effective and more profitable than the larger firms under that, based upon that data. Yeah, if we can get lawyers to know that they need to do business development beyond entrepreneurs and run a better firm, right? Well, I think that's the starting point. You know, they need to, because I think many managing partners, while maybe not using the terminology, do understand that they need to address that, but you need to get, you need to have those conversations with everybody throughout the firm. Sometimes any need to identify those that want to business development, do business development, you need to nurture that from an early stage. And, you know, it can't, I think there's some, some that just aren't going to be successful at it. So you don't, you don't push on the things that they're not going to be successful at. But I do think there's a lot of, you know, even young attorneys that are looking to, that are looking to get out there, start building a book and understand that working their way up the, the ladder is based upon that. You know, years ago, a colleague of mine from law school came to me and we were probably five years out of law school and he said, I, I realized that if I don't business development, business development, I'm not going to make partner at the firm that I'm at, well, you're behind the eight ball five years in because the traditional, the trajectory is seven to eight years. Well, why wasn't that firm teaching them to do it, you know, early or wrong? And I don't expect you to bring in a client near one or two. I do expect you to build relationships in year one and two and start, you know, having those connections that you're going to reach out to, to establish yourself as an expert in the field with blog posts and other things so that you can point to, hey, I wrote an article that's on our website about, you know, the new over time laws that are coming out and the adjustments. So now you're establishing an expertise in the field and you can point to, but if you're starting year five on that, good luck making the transition to partner in two to three years. I totally agree with that 100%. You heard it from a lawyer. I'm telling you right now, you lawyer people, you attorneys need to learn how to do business development and run a better firm, because I'm going to say the most successful law firms that I've seen are ones that are teaching people how to do business development and run it like a business, not like a practice of law. That's what I've said. All right. With that said, I can't believe Jim that we've had this, this conversation time has gone by so fast. What are some action steps that the listeners can take to get results as soon as they finish listening to you, because you know, we're all about getting results here on our podcast. I would say the biggest is to, it's multi-step probably, identify where you want to go. What is holding you back from it? Pull the trigger and sell the mills, right? So Jim Collins talked about warehouser and how they realized that the mills were a major component of the business, but the CEO said we're selling them because we're moving in a different direction. It's a scary proposition to sell the mills, but you have to get rid of the dead weight. Whatever's holding you back is terrifying as it may seem, get rid of it and move forward. I was at a CLE conference and a personal injury attorney said they brought a consultant in, and they realized that the 80-20 rule, 80% of the money came from 20% of the business, and they had done it, and they started going through their clients, ABCD, and the attorney said before every vacation he would call a D-level client and fire them and just get them off his docket. I mean, you have to do it ethically. You know, you make sure there's a transition, but you say, "Look, we're not the right fit. We need to find you somebody else. We're not going to continue with your case." So he made it a point, A, made it feel good going on vacation, but B, eliminated the clients that were taking up 80% of his dime and bringing him 20% of his money, right? Don't kill yourself on those things. Learn to figure out what is holding you back, and you've got to cut it out, because everybody has something that's holding the back, and they can grow if they sell the mills. I agree with that, and what's interesting is that sometimes you need help to do that. Don't do it alone. A lot of lawyers think that they can do it by themselves. It's okay to have friends, family, consultants, books to help you. I mean, it sounds like you've done that, Jim. Well, and yes, yes, I have, and it's been very helpful, but as I said, I mean, I had to sell the mill, not by Joyce. It left, right? And so that was the epiphany for me that we can take that large client and lose it and still build a more profitable business as a result of it. But that's the trepidation. We've got the work. We love doing the work. We feel better working on files, regardless of their profit level, than sitting in our office and saying, "I don't have anything to do right now." Well, you do have something to do, go market yourself, go network, go to lunch, play golf with people that may be looking for a lawyer, or maybe ought to refer you out. You fill that time as a business owner who needs to get the business up and running it yet. And it comes. You just have to be. You have to trust it. Yes. You have to trust the process. Can I just ask one more question before we go? I have two, actually. One is, what is your favorite quote and why? So a quotation that I was an English lit major in college, and so, of course, we had to read a lot of poetry. And one that always struck was, "May a man's reach be greater than his grasp for what is a heaven for." Robert Browning wrote that, and I've always taken it to mean that your dreams of what you can be need to be far larger than what you may be able to achieve, because if you're always content with where you are, you're never going to grow. Which actually brings me to my second question. Every law firm wants to grow, in my opinion, and I could be wrong about that. Why do lawyers not take the time to work on their business, is those spending all their time working in their business? Well, again, I think that they're terrified of not having the billable hour. They're hardwired to need to bill time and have something to put on their time sheet. As the managing partner, I spend a lot of time that doesn't see a time sheet. I should track my administrative work much closer, but so they feel uncomfortable being on a golf course with people that may be good connections with them, because it's a four or five hour day, and maybe a client's calling, and they're not responding fast enough, and they get, there's an anxiety level. I've watched it, I've watched it in colleagues of mine, that they can't put down the phone for two or three hours. But in reality, I look at my phone after around a golf, and you go through the emails, and my people have dealt with it. There's not a question in that email that needed me, it was, I empowered the people around me to deal with the issue and move forward with it. They're not trusting the people around them, they feel too compelled to always be working for the client, and feel to realize that the work will get done, but you need to be able to balance the work, business development side of it, the business administrative side of it, and the work side of it, and you're allowed to train your clients to not call you after six o'clock too. I know a lot of attorneys who are taking calls at eight, nine, ten o'clock, yes, there's an indication of emergency, but most of the time, things can be dealt with between nine and five, and you can have a life at the same time. Oh my gosh, true or words, and it doesn't matter if you're running a law firm or any business, what Jim just said is a hundred percent true. Jim, where can people find you? How do they get in touch with you if they want to work with you? So our website is www.trimprolaw.com, T-R-I-M-P-R-U-L-A-W.com, it's probably the easiest way to find us, we're located in Morristown, New Jersey, but we also work in New York and Pennsylvania, and if it's not necessarily a labor and employment matter that you need help with, we have colleagues that are specialized in other areas of corporate work that we can certainly refer the work out to and help build the businesses team to make sure that they're fortified in all of the areas that they need to work in. I love that, Jim, thank you so much for being a guest today, you were delightful, delicious and lovely. This has been fantastic, I really appreciate your time, I thank you for having me. Oh, anytime, and if you loved Jim's podcast and know someone who needs to listen to it, please board it to them, and as always, if you like what you hear, please like us on your favorite podcast platform. I am Dr. Jean, the results queen, and when you're ready to get results, come listen to the results queen, go out and get results. Thank you for listening to getting results with Dr. Jean the results queen. If you like the show, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We appreciate it, and it really helps your fellow business owners to find the show. Go to getting results with Dr. Jean.com for more information on how you can achieve better business results with caveman brain business growth system and the entrepreneurial operating system. Cheers to you, getting results. (upbeat music)
