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Visit maxlawevents.com for full event details and to grab your ticket today. Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and Tyson Matrix. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. I'm Jim Hacking. And I'm Tyson Matrix. What's up Jim Bo? I'm very excited for those of you who aren't watching this on video. Tyson is set up in his car or his truck and he's across the street from a hooters. You can see it in the background. He's getting ready to go in for a hearing after our podcast. So it's a very exciting time. We leave no stone unturned in bringing you the best legal marketing and law firm management content on the planet. That's right. So here's what I'll tell you. This is like the most comfortable setup I've ever had because I'm in the back of Amy's grand wagon here because I'm waiting for my truck to be delivered. And so it's a pretty good setup to be honest with you. It's pretty comfy. The least comfortable thing that I've got going on right now is my neck, because I've been lifting. My neck is gotten too big. So my shirts, all the collars are too freaking tight. So like I'm slightly strangling myself. So that's, because I've got to have this tie on. That's like my biggest problem right now. You look a little buff. Yeah, I have that same problem, but it's not from, it's not from lifting. It's from eating too much. My shirts don't fit. Yeah, dude. This thing, it's like so tight. I can't wait to get it off, but I've got a hearing after this and I'm going to take this thing off. I've got shorts and a shirt to change into. That's what I'm talking about. Now listen. I wanted to ask you about that truck. Listen, Linda. Listen. Listen. I don't know what that means, but you were sort of live tweeting your experience with the car dealer. And specifically, they, you had hammered out a deal and then they came up with some BS $2,197 charge for something. I don't remember what it was. It was like, I don't know what it was for, but did you end up doing the deal? I did the deal. I took Stephen Lefkopf's advice, which was good advice. He's like, listen, if you got the deal, you wanted. They took it off because they added this "accessories." And they weren't accessories. It was like these, it was like something security etching and all this other crap. And I said, I'm not paying for that. So they took it off, but it seems like, listen, if you got the price you wanted, if it's a good deal, just buy the truck. He's like, okay, I'm by the truck. So, yeah. I'm glad you said that you had the truck you wanted. Yeah, me too. It was one that I was looking for a specific color, specific features. And so, yeah, I got the one I wanted. It's a black F-150 Ford Lightning, so it's completely electric. And so, hopefully in six months, I'm not complaining about having an EV, but I think I'll like it. I think it's perfect for what I need it for. Are you going to be able to charge it at your house? Yeah, yeah. So, there's a variety of options for charging, but I'm going to have a 240, I think it's 240 volt installed at the house. But then also, there's like a regular plug you can do, but the charging is like five miles an hour. So you don't get a lot of it. So I'll install the 240 volts and I'll get more charging. But then you can charge it completely in like 40 minutes if you would like a supercharger. My buddy has not that. He has that Rivian thing, you know, that truck. And he, that's Stuart, he always has to drive down to Florida. And he says that it's like, it charges really fast for the first 60%, but then the back 40% is really slow. So you end up charging more often than the, they tell you that it's going to. Yeah, there's all these little rules. But if I can get it set up right, I'll never stop for gas. So, because I'm not going to be taking it across the country. So it'll, I can go, you know, pretty much anywhere in the state that I need to go for, for any court appearances, I can go to mostly, really, if you're really thinking about it, if it's more than three hours, I'm going to be flying there anyways. So, but if it's within that three hours, I can drive there and back without a problem. And you should get charged panels for your roof. My neighbor has got solar panels. He's been trying to get me to, to buy them because his, his son sells them or sudden law sells them and he's been trying to get me to do them. But I've thought about it. It'd be kind of nice. It's true. Yeah, now you have perfect reason to do it. Be good. I don't know if there's still tax credits for, but I'm pretty sure there are. There's a $7,500 tax credit for the truck. So that's pretty, I mean, that's pretty damn good. That's great. Cool. All right. Let's talk about some business though. Let's talk about the topic of the day, which I'll let you introduce. The topic of the day is having hard, tough, difficult conversations. And this is something that I would say for a long time, for me as a person and me as a boss, I liked to avoid. I have historically not liked having hard conversations. And I'm sort of a people pleaser and I want people to like me. And so it's been historically a trade of mine to not want to have hard conversations. I have done some work on this and I find myself much more engaged in having many more difficult conversations. So I thought that'd make a good topic for us. Yeah. You and I talked about this a little bit ago. And I told you, I feel like you've always been really good at this. And you told me you've not been very good at this historically. And I found that really interesting. You've always been good to me. We've had some tough conversations with people in the past. And I've been on those calls with you. And I feel like you've handled it really, really well. You had like this fear of them, right? Like, that's what you, I think that's what you're doing. I'm not sure. Yeah. So do you know where that comes from? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's actually an attempt to control outcomes. I think it's an attempt to, if I say things the right way, if I don't speak what I think, what I actually think, then I can navigate the situation to a place where I want it to be. I think part of it comes from my dad. I always like to have hard conversations. You may recall that when he retired from his firm, he used to volunteer, call me up and say, hey Jimmy, you got anybody you want me to fire? I'll come over and do it. Like that was his, that was his bag. And so I was always sort of put off by that. But there's sort of two places I've landed on it. One is I think it's an attempt to control in a weird way. And two, I've gotten much more willing to let go of the result. Sometimes things just need to be said. And you might not know what's going to happen after you say it. But it just needs to be said and clarified. And I think that's especially true in the workplace where, you know, you're going to do yourself and your team a whole lot of favors by having a harder conversation earlier than later, letting things percolate or spill over because you were failing to have those hard conversations. So I want to go back to the control thing. So what do you think you're controlling if you, if you don't have the conversation? Because I feel like that that's the opposite of what you're doing. Yeah. I'm a very clever boy and I, I'm, I'm, I'm really good at figuring out what I want to happen, but then being like 20 steps down the road to get there and like reverse engineering it. And I think that my, in my mind, if I, if I have the hard conversation and I say what needs to be said, I don't know what the outcome is going to be. But if I pull punches and I don't say things, then maybe later I can say something that I need to say or maybe I can guide someone in a different way. I'm not saying this is rational. I'm just saying that this is sort of how my mind works, that, that sort of, it's a sort of manipulative sort of, and when I say controlling, it's, it's, I think that one thing with hard conversations is I was always afraid, especially with my dad to have there be anger and tumult, right? Yeah. And so like I'd rather just keep my mouth shut and not let things sort of spill over. So, and I get that. So it's almost like you're controlling your environment by not doing anything and not saying anything in a way. Yeah. So in my family, like we just didn't talk. Like it was like we didn't have conversation. So I've like as an adult, like had to muddle my way through learning some of this stuff and one of the major things, I think it was just my upbringing. It was not, not saying what I truly felt. And that's where I've had to like, I've, I've been okay with having the conversations, but in the past, what I would do is, is I would have the conversation, but never during the conversation would I actually say what I felt, like truly felt. So if I'm talking to an employee, I would, I would, I would say, hey, we need to have this conversation. So we would sit down, we'd have the conversation. And I'd let them say all the things that they felt. And I would kind of like, I would sugarcoat things. I would, I would say things just to kind of get through the conversation, but not like really get to the heart of it. And where I've gotten a lot better is just saying, listen, here's, here's what I really feel about this. And every time I've done that, I, it's always gotten way better than I would have thought it would have. But like, that was what was my struggle was like just, I would, I would get in the middle of the conversation, but never really convey how I felt about the situation. That makes sense. That's interesting because I've certainly seen situations where you've gotten hot. And I think you're pretty good at calming down and stabilizing and maybe you're going beyond that to just really self-regulating. And if I totally get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I will say like one of my strengths is like, I'll get hot. But before I make any decision or before I really react, I mean, there, of course, there's been situations where I've in the moments that things are done, things that I probably shouldn't have, but for the most part, I'll get hot. I'll kind of do it in private. And then I'll regulate. And then I'll go through and I'll, I'll make the decision that needs to be made. But I do have kind of a short fuse. So that does happen sometimes. But if I do have a shrink, that's one of those like, okay, let's go into this with a clear head. And I mean, I talked about that with like depots. Like we have a client. I won't give a lot of details about him because he's kind of a hyperophile client. But the client was talking about how like, why is it not okay for me to get mad during the depot? Because you're, because you're not going to think clearly. Like that's, that's the reason. It's okay to show emotion, but like you get, you get angry and you don't think that's the problem. It's just a, it's a, it's human nature that you get angry. And so we're talking about these crucial conversations and everything. These, these really difficult conversations. When you go into these conversations, like if you're mad, if you're angry, you're not being making decisions or saying things that are right. You're not going to be saying things that you should be saying because you're just not thinking clearly. It's human nature. Well, I'm sure that if you sat down and thought about it, I'm going to take somebody's deposition and I can anticipate them getting mad. I think you'd be really happy as the lawyer knowing that they're going to lose their cool because you're going to, you know, get things out of them that you never would have otherwise. But hell yeah. I'm going to poke the bear and I like poking the bear. Hell yeah. That's what I'm going to do. Right. So that works well in the depot. I don't know if it works that well in a workplace. And I really liked this book, Radical Cander. And when I went to the last EOS conference in San Diego, they had the author of Radical Cander come and, you know, she talked about, you know, being direct, not being dramatic, being factual, sort of draining out the emotion or things that are arguable and just focusing on the facts. Like, and a fact can be, you know, when you did this, it made me feel like that. That's a fact. You can talk about your feelings. But you don't give them ammunition to hit you back over the head with an interpretation. In other words, lay out the fact. This is really what I've been doing. I've been laying out the facts and then getting curious, getting curious. Instead of saying, when you did this, you were an asshole. Instead of saying, when you did this, it made me feel like this or it made me think this or it made me remember this. Right. And so I think it's important in all of these conversations that you sort of check in and you sort of say, you know, where is this coming from? What's my role in it? How is this triggering me? You know, what is this bringing up from my past? What's been my role in it? I think all those things are really important when you're having these conversations. And you do, as much as I hate it, you do have to sort of let go of the result. And you just don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. I like the part of like asking questions too, where you, a lot of these conversations I'm thinking about is like conversations with employees, right, where you're, or could be business partners or whatever, but it's going in, like you're talking about like curiosity, it's like asking questions and trying not to go into it with, with assumptions. Like that's, that's, that's really, really difficult to do. And then something I saw, I saw this whole year or two ago where someone had posted about like a superpower is being able to see it from the other side's perspective. And like, so you're in the Middle East conversations and sometimes you can do this to your detriment. So I, I'd be careful about this one, but at least try it a little bit to, to see it from the other side from the, from their perspective. Like, why might they be coming from this? Why might their actions be these actions? Why might, why might they be thinking these things? And that might change your approach to things. So let's say you are really pissed off about something an employee did. Well, stop for a second. Think about maybe why they did the things that they did. Like, and really try to do it. And you might get some understanding is maybe maybe you do have some culpability in this. Maybe there's a reason why they're doing the actions that, taking the actions that they took just because maybe it's something you did or maybe it's, you didn't provide the tools of the resources or the training. So like really thinking about from their perspective can be pretty powerful. I think that's really important. And especially as the law firm owner, you always say, I think for most failures or mistakes you have to come, unless somebody is doing something intentional or not following the process, then you have to ask yourself, well, did our incomplete systems contribute to this problem? What role did I have? What could we have done differently? What structurally can we do so this doesn't happen again? Those kinds of things. So we had a situation this week where he had to have a difficult conversation with a team member. He made a mistake and instead of completely owning up to it, he sort of threw a bomb at us, blaming us, leadership for something that was completely untrue. And so, I mean, I waited a few days and we had a meeting and like I said, I sort of laid out the facts of everything that happened. And then I got curious and asked him, you know, what were you thinking here or can you see it this way or why would you say that? And it was much more effective than being on one of the extremes. One extreme is being super nice and try not to ever rock the boat so you don't have any hard conversations then at the end of the day, you just get pissed at someone and fire them. Or where you're this hothead and you're responding to everything immediately and quickly and sort of overreacting. The middle path is checking in where you're at, seeing what your role is in it, seeing what their role is in it, and then seeing, you know, what are the facts of the situation? How can you fix it? How could you prevent it? How do we work in the future to move on and beyond this and then go from there? You know, one of the things I've found is really powerful too is if there is an issue that's involving multiple people, in the past, what we've done is we've done this a few different ways, but we've had separate conversations. I feel like that was the appropriate thing to do is, okay, Jim, I'm going to talk to you separately. Amani, I'll talk to you separately. But what I found is that creates more issues than it solves. So what I found is that actually having everyone in the room at the same time during that conversation, or if it's virtual, you know, everyone on the same Google Meet or Zoom call, because what people tend to do is they tend to tell the truth more when they have the other person in the room as opposed to, if I'm separate, I'm going to tell my side of the story is what I'm going to do. And so having everyone in that room is just, to me, far better way of getting to the root of the issue than having them separate. I think that's great. And it's something I hadn't actually thought of. Have you had any other situations lately where you've had to have difficult conversations? I mean, I've been having more and more. I mean, we had to talk to a vendor about a problem that we were having, and we've been finding ourselves in these situations a little more often. And, you know, as you grow and you deal with people, you have more situations. So how about you? No, not necessarily. I mean, I had some in December. So I had some tough ones in December. And how am I going to put this? You were talking about like coming with facts and everything and not emotions. And I think that that is really effective for a lot of reasons. And I'll be fairly blunt without giving a lot of details. When you're dealing with people that are not very honest and they just, they tend to lie, coming with facts, just facts, not emotions is really powerful and it's effective. And it cuts through because if you start to give with the emotion, if you start to, if you lead with emotion or you make it about emotion, then what, it gives wiggle room, right? It allows them to kind of weasel out a little bit of stuff. And if you're dealing with people that are dishonest, dealing with the facts are really, really important. And so I've talked about that Spy the Lie book before. One of the things they talk about too is if you're talking to someone and you're, you're asking questions. So let's say, I mean, let's say that an employee screwed up and you're trying to get details and you ask, you ask a question like, Hey, Jim, you know, why is it that you, you spoke to the client that way? And instead of saying, instead of Jim saying, well, the reason why I did it was because she, Ms. Jones raised her voice at me. And so I, I got angry. And so you, you answer it directly. And instead you say, Tyson, you know me, why would I, you know, I go to church every Sunday. I'm, I'm an honest person. I'm someone that treats people with respect, right? So you don't, you don't answer the question directly. That's, okay. Okay, that's acute. That doesn't mean that they're lying, but it's a sign that maybe they're lying. You need to ask some more questions. So if, when you're having these, these, these difficult conversations, these ones that are, that can be really, really tough sometimes, there can be a lot of motion in them, even though you are bringing a lot of facts to it. Internally, the, you've got, you're stressed. You're anxious, right? You've got a lot going on. You need to still be able to identify some of these things that they're saying. You need to be listening. You need to be actively listening because they start to give you cues like that. You need to listen and follow up because you, part of that, having these really, really important conversations is, is listening so you can then ask the right questions. There's another piece to this too that we bring as lawyers and especially litigators. And that is we have a toolbox that a lot of people don't have. So you need to be careful. You need to be a little bit careful that you don't slip into cross-examination on the stand with Colonel Nathan Jessup up on the stand. You want to be very, very careful about sliding into that role because it's just so natural and easy. And like you said, you know, that was a tell when that person, you know, tried to obfuscate and point to something else. So I think that's something that we've come to. I've come to realize. Yeah. That's a good point. All right. We need to wrap things up. Can anything else you want to add? Just. Yeah. I would say that if you avoid hard conversations. Then if you avoid smaller hard conversations, then eventually you're going to that's going to lead to bigger, harder conversations. And if you don't, if you don't deal with those bigger, harder conversations, then you're going to deal with real problems. Right. So you can really nip a lot of stuff in the bud. If you're open and honest and Gary V calls it candor with kindness. Right. So there's no reason that says candor has to be mean. Candor can be accurate and honest and truthful and unemotional. And I just think that the more you put it off, the harder it's going to be. That's a great point. I'll just add one more thing to that. When you, when you have a situation with someone where you have to end that working relationship, whether it's a vendor or an employee, whatever, that doesn't mean it's got to be this you versus them or, you know, our relationships over or I don't like you anymore. It doesn't have to be that. You can still do this in a way where you, there's not anger involved and will they be angry? Maybe that's on them, but you don't have to bring that to the situation. You can, you can make the situation better potentially by, by not having that mentality. So I, the us versus them, you don't have to have that. I mean, just it's, it's, which I, this is coming from one. I can, I can slip into that and I, and I, and I try not to, but I just know that you can do it. I can do it too. I can do better, but you don't have to have that mentality. All right, Jimbo, let's wrap things up before I do want to remind everyone. Join us in the big Facebook group. It's, it's growing every single day. So make sure you join us there. Get a lot of great information on a daily basis. If you want to join us in the guild, go to maxloggild.com. You can join us at one of our quarterly masterminds. Our next one's going to be Charlotte. And then after that, it is Las Vegas, which is going to be a lot of fun. Jimmy is going to go crazy out in Vegas. I'm sure you're going to go get like sports cars and bet a bunch on black. I'm sure. And so, you join us at that. It's right at maxloggild.com. And then while you're listening to the rest of this episode with our tips and hacks of the week, make sure you give us a five star review. It helps spread the love. We would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week? I either told you or my team about this a couple of weeks ago and I've been doing it periodically. And we talked on the show today about sort of checking in where you're at before you have these conversations. And I came across, I don't know where, I came across a hack, if you will, on how to get in touch with where you're at. And what the author suggested was you figure out where in your body the emotion is sitting. And then you figure out what sound, like you try to channel a sound from that part of your body and then you make that sound. Right? And so, this reminds me of when my dad, the day my dad quit smoking, my grandmother decided to go to the 905 liquor store to get her weekly supply of beer. And she drove right through the red light and totaled my dad's car on the day he was quitting smoking. So, we all had to go in and check on him about every half hour. He was laying face down on his bed and he was just going, "Aww." It's so mad. So, in any event, I've used this for different, and it's weird, if you try this, and if you're in tune, there are parts of your body where different emotions lie. So, if you can tap into it before you have that meeting, obviously you don't want to do this in public, but it's something that has helped me so far the last couple of weeks. That's so funny. I'm just picturing your dad. I'm picturing you doing it, actually, is what I'm picturing, so that's hilarious. Right. That's so funny. So, for mine, I've got a... So, Jim, do you have jumper cables in your car? Mm-hmm. Okay, you don't have one of these things? You don't have one of these things? I don't. Okay, so, my tip of the week, the company, the main company that most people have, I think it's NOCO. I've got a NOCO one in one of my vehicles, but... So, you don't need jumper cables anymore, because jumper cables require another vehicle to jump your car. But you have these little things. You've got these little boost boxes. And the reason why I'm recommending it is because it's not just for jumping your vehicle. It actually comes with cables. It fits in a very small case. You just throw it in your trunk or in your glove box, some of these. But they also double as a battery pack. So, this big thing right here is a big battery pack. So, if you need to charge on the go, whether you're doing video or laptop, you need to charge it. Like, because you could plug your laptop into this, too. It's really, really handy as the go, because as lawyers, we're always on the go. And so, Jim, I can't believe you. I'm going to get you one of these, because they're freaking awesome. But it prevents you from having to pull up another car up to your vehicle to jumpstart or whatever. But X is a flashlight, it's a safety mechanism. But then you can charge your phone, you can charge your laptop, you can charge your iPad, whatever it may be. So, I highly recommend it. You can get a bunch of them. You just get a, it's on the other call to boost boxes or something like that. I think you're going to say that you're going to say they also serve as a way to torture bad guys in the movie. Well, I don't think they, you can do that, because I think those are a feature that would probably prevent that from shocking someone. So, I only say that because I was using it the other day and I was trying to, I was actually trying to jump my motorcycle. And it, like, it cut off because it, like, I touched it against a piece of metal. But, all right, Jimbo, that's my tip of the week. Have a wonderful day. I'll talk to you later. All right, well, it seems like Tyson may have died off. So, I'll end the show. Good being with all of you. Tune in next week. And thanks for everything. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer Badger. To 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. started today.
