In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Danielle Hendon discuss:
- Embracing perseverance
- Shifting mindsets for sustainability
- Transitioning toward flat fee models
- Balancing finances for growth
Key Takeaways:
- Perseverance shapes long-term success by turning setbacks into momentum rather than defeat. Continuing the work is what separates progress from failure. Stopping, not struggling, is the only real loss.
- Firms thrive when they prioritize profitability and long-term health, ensuring they can keep serving clients with excellence. This mindset shift strengthens stability. It helps legal teams build a practice that lasts.
- Moving from billable hours to flat fees boosts efficiency, scale, and client trust when managed with clarity and intention. Careful rollout keeps expectations aligned. The shift can transform the client experience.
- Monitoring vital metrics like the rule of thirds helps maintain healthy revenue distribution and protects profitability. This supports passion projects and pro bono work. Clients benefit from transparency and lower stress.
“You are never a failure until you stop trying. Everything is an opportunity to win and move forward. You haven’t failed until you stop persevering. When you’ve given up, that’s failure.” — Danielle Hendon
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About Danielle Hendon: Danielle Hendon is the Founder and CEO of 4 Corners CFO, where she helps small business owners make smart financial decisions. She has over a decade of experience in corporate finance and accounting, and once led an audit team through a corporate bankruptcy.
Danielle believes that financial statements tell a story, not just numbers—and that entrepreneurs should be empowered to write their own chapters. She started 4 Corners CFO to give business owners clarity and confidence so they can build profitable and sustainable legacies.
Before her finance career, she studied music. Today, she draws on that creativity to bring both discipline and vision to her work. At the heart of it all, Danielle is a mom—and her children inspire her daily to do work that matters.
Connect with Danielle Hendon:
Website: https://4cornerscfo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-hendon/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Hey everyone. Steve Fretzin here and I’ve launched a new show called Future rainmakers. This is short, focused episodes packed with strategies to help you build a bigger practice with less stress. Give it a listen. I know you’re going to love it. And for today, enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:18]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:41]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here, and welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. We are cooking. We’ve got, I want to say, like, 550 shows. Danielle, not a bad run two week for like, the last four years or something. So it’s been a grind. It’s been amazing. And I get to meet amazing people like you. So no complaints. I’m not complaining. How you doing today? Good day so far?
Danielle Hendon [01:00]
I’m doing great. I am so excited to be here. Any chance I can get to have anybody look at their numbers, is a win in my book. And if that’s all you do on the other side of listening, this is look at your numbers and have a conversation. I’ve done well.
Steve Fretzin [01:14]
All right, all right. We’re going to force you to look at numbers. That’s our goal for today. If you guys are hearing about be that lawyer the podcast for the first time. Check it out. We also have be that lawyer the book, 101 top Rainmaker, secrets to growing a successful law practice. We took the best 100 interviews from this pod and we put them into a book, and it’s absolutely fantastic bestseller on Amazon. And also, if anybody’s interested in talking to me directly about 2026 trying to identify your gaps. How do you work smarter, not harder? To Grow Your law practice? Make equity go off on your own, lateral whatever, and you need the numbers, reach out to me directly at [email protected] and we’ll go from there. Let’s dive in here. Danielle, we’ve got a fantastic quote of the show at Nelson Mandela. Man he has a lot of good quotes. Oh yeah, this one’s a doozy. I never lose. I either win or learn. What a fantastic way to look at things. And so true. And welcome to the show and tell us why you love that quote.
Danielle Hendon [02:13]
Oh my gosh, it is so I take a little spin on it, but it is a mantra that I have, personally and professionally. I believe that you are never a failure until you stop trying. Everything is an opportunity to win and move forward. It’s you haven’t failed until you stopped persevering when you’ve given up. That’s failure.
Steve Fretzin [02:31]
Yeah, that’s the failure. And by the way, I talked about this show or two ago that it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to give up a did you learn something? Maybe you gave up on be trying to be a professional chef and do something else, because you just hate cleaning dishes. Okay? Well, then you learn something, but you gave up, which I think was good. Maybe give up quicker, you know, than dragging things out over, you know, 10 years. If you’re not happy, you don’t feel it. Business Development for lawyers, if you really care about your career and the growth and everything, don’t give up. Don’t give up on that. But maybe become a student of the game, maybe in the numbers, right? Like, there’s all these important business sides of the law that we can’t just give up because it’s hard. We have to persevere. But you can bring great people in, like me or Danielle to talk to you and help you through it. It doesn’t mean, you know, you got to do that on everything, but I think for the things that really aren’t your jam, like, why not, right so?
Danielle Hendon [03:20]
And not just the things that aren’t your jam, but I feel like one of the benefits to having someone like you or I, Steve, is we get to be a partner in something that can be very personal and lonely. Not a lot of people talk about these kinds of things with their spouse, with their circle, with like, those types of things that you just need somebody to be a sounding board.
Steve Fretzin [03:38]
Yeah, fantastic. Well, everybody you guys are going to enjoy today. We’ve got Danielle Hendon, owner and founder of four corner CFO, is that was that your dream to be a CFO and work with law firms?
Danielle Hendon [03:49]
Absolutely not. So my husband is 100% the entrepreneurial mindset in our house. I was the ladder climber. I was going to I went into public accounting. I thought I was going to make partner there, and then life threw curveball, and I had a kid, and was like, Nope, we’re not going to stay in public accounting anymore. And when I landed in oil and gas, I’m in the Houston area, so a lot of my experience was there. I was there for a decade. Thought I was going to climb the ladder, that path, and oh yeah, let’s go through a bankruptcy and then a pandemic, and here I am now running a business.
Steve Fretzin [04:26]
Well, fantastic, and thank God you are, because I think the things that you and I do are for many attorneys, incredibly difficult and foreign, and they don’t have to be, but it’s just a matter of of again, either learning it or bringing in someone to help you learn it or help you execute on it. So let’s jump in. I mean, there’s a, you know, this kind of goes in line with there’s a mind shift that attorneys need to make, that could be a money mindset, right? I mean, we all have our own angle and attitudes and feelings about money. And I know, like I talk about by the late great Larry the lawyer, my father, who you. Grew up in the projects in Chicago, and, you know, they just was poorer than poor, and, you know, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and got into law school and college and law school and had a great and successful career. But, you know, he always had a kind of a funny mindset about money, so let’s maybe that’s a good place to start.
Danielle Hendon [05:19]
Yeah, I think so this doesn’t necessarily apply to all lawyers, but it does apply to a lot of the law firms that we work with in our business, and that’s because we work with very passionate, passion centered businesses, and when I say that you are so passionate that sometimes it is to your detriment as a law firm or as a lawyer, you are doing all the things and trying to help all the people. And the mindset shift here is that if you are not profitable and haven’t built a sustainable firm, you can’t keep helping people. If you keep doing the pro bono, or you’re not charging enough, or you just keep working yourself into burnout, you’re not going to be around to continue helping the people you’re helping now.
Steve Fretzin [06:00]
Yeah, it’s, you know, I got back from doing a retreat for big law firm and all their equity partners, and I was kept bringing back the idea that, you know, this is a battery. Our brains and our bodies are these batteries that you know we need them to last a day and in a lifetime. And so, you know, whether you’re feeding the battery with sleep, you know, good food and exercise or whatever, or that you’re just so stressed out doing everything battery that’s doing everything like you’ve got your phone running, every video and every possible software on your phone. Well, the battery is going to die in a few hours, right? Versus it lasting all day. So I think that’s where, you know, handing things over and really leveraging your team, leveraging technology, leveraging and outsourcing things to you and I that’s really where a lot of it happens. But what do lawyers then need to what are their blind spots as it relates to things that hold them back from growing and scaling in the areas that you focus in?
Danielle Hendon [06:56]
One of the biggest that I see is the focus on billable hours, and not necessarily converting that into flat fees and efficiencies and scalability of a law firm or dollars collected. There’s kind of two sides to that coin. But if your only focus is on, how many hours are we doing? How many hours is this person capable of doing? What about the flat fees they’re working on? Are they working on flat fees? Are your flat fees profitable and generating the revenue they’re supposed to? Not only are flat fees supposed to make just as much money as they would if you had billed it out hourly, they’re supposed to make more. That’s the whole point. And sometimes we come across lawyers that are like, Oh, well, you know, but it didn’t take that long. I feel bad charging extra, and I like to think of that as the sweat equity that you have already put into the firm. It is, whether it’s you or a member of your team, it’s their experience, the knowledge, the background, the systems and tools that you’re paying for. The other things that help make that run quickly are still a value add. The client is still getting the same value at the end of the day. And then I’m going to say on the flip side of that coin is the dollar perspective. I think it’s very easy running a law firm to get so hung up in the hours that you forget the dollars, and sometimes especially in the world we’re in now. And I’m seeing this in accounting firms and law firms, which is kind of why I love the law firm connection as an accountant, there is a shift in the culture of a lot of these firms, especially smaller businesses, where people don’t necessarily want to work 40 hours a week, and they definitely don’t want to work 60 so getting into that shift and saying, Okay, but how do we still make it profitable? How do we make sure, and I love this with flat fees too, that people are being efficient, getting through the work, getting through everything they need to do, and we’re bringing in the revenue, not just the hours, because it’s not about, and I’m going to use a corporate term here, but it’s not about the butts in seats anymore. It’s about getting the job done and getting paid for the value that you add for that job.
Steve Fretzin [08:56]
Yeah, and the, you know, the what’s coming up the pike, right with AI and with, you know, the lower end legal services being basically handled fairly quickly that Bill Lauer is going to be challenging. How do you work with law firms to help them transition from, and, you know, from the billable to the flat fee, and what do you have an example of someone that you work with that is that was able to make that transition successfully and like, yeah, take us through that. Because I think there are people listening that have always wanted to maybe do that, but didn’t have quite the right direction.
Danielle Hendon [09:30]
So I’m not even giving you a success story. I’m going to give you a story of what we’re working on currently with a client right now that I know will be successful, and they have all the things. They’ve already got some flat fees. They’ve got some billable hours. I will tell you. One of the biggest tools in our toolbox that we use with clients is, I don’t care who you are, what you do, or how you do it, we’re going to budget based on how many hours everybody can work, because at the end of the day, if the capacity for that employee is or that associate is, 30 hours. Hours a week, then we want to budget 30 hours a week at whatever their billable rate would be. I don’t care if they’re working on flat fees or billable work. I want to know what it would be if it was all billable hours. And then from there, we can say how much of it was flat fee versus billable hours. When we start to see what’s coming back, are we above or below that billable hour number, how much work are they doing in other spaces or other formats of pricing? And then the really cool part that we’re working with a client right now on is how to take that information and say, How do I take some of these engagements that are billable hours and create a hybrid model of pricing? What pieces of this engagement can I pull out? Because I know that I can profit if I flat fee price it at this I don’t care what part of it, it is. And you start to build like a menu. Instead of having this billable hour engagement and a retainer, you have this menu of flat fees that can be done. And there’s always depending on who you are and what you do, there are always going to be some kind of hourly component. I never want you to lose money on a flat fee. And if it goes above and beyond, and you’ve got to watch out for that scope creep. But if it goes above and beyond, what’s in those flat fees, then it is going to be another flat fee, or an hourly or something on top of it. Okay?
Steve Fretzin [11:18]
And how do you how do we circle the square, as it relates to the ethical side of the billable hour, the flat fee, how we’re charging to make sure that we feel good about it, you know, for the lawyers that are feeling, you know, like, hey, it only took me two hours. I know I’ve put 20 years behind me. It only took me two hours. The flat fee was, you know, 10 grand, or whatever it might be like, that’s, there’s other ethical considerations, or is that just only.
Danielle Hendon [11:43]
I mean, you don’t want to price yourself out of the market, like, sure, sure. Obviously, you want to be similar to everybody else doing similar. You can’t price yourself out of the market, or you’re going to take a hit on your sales. However, from an ethical component, I’m going to circle back to what we said at the beginning, where I said, if you are really passionate about what you do, having that profitable business, having those flat fees give you those profit margins, allows you to go do passion projects. The people that can afford to pay are going to pay the market rate. And if you’re profitable at that market rate, then you get to go pick up the people that really need help and can’t pay for it.
Steve Fretzin [12:19]
Yeah. Okay, very cool. So there is a a way for someone who is billable hour exclusive to start transitioning into the flat fee and to, you know, identifying scope and making sure that everybody’s happy. How do we get the clients around it? Because it’s one thing to take the mindset of the lawyer and get that wrapped up. But then how do they go back to their clients and say, Look, this is how we want to do things moving forward.
Danielle Hendon [12:48]
So if it’s a client that’s already in place, I think that’s a very hard conversation to have, okay, but it’s an easier transition with somebody who’s never known you for billable hours to begin with, okay, that next sale that you make, if you really want to, you get into like, contracts and engagements and what you’ve already agreed to, that can be really difficult to switch over to flat fee in the middle of something.
Steve Fretzin [13:09]
Right. In the middle of something, yes, but let’s say that I’ve been working with a lawyer for a couple years. I have a new project, right? And that new project is 50 hours billable. They’re changed. They’ve changed over to the flat fee. You couldn’t they could talk to me about that and say, look, we’ve analyzed what you’ve done. Where are billable all this. We think we have a way for you to be in a better place, and it’s going to make everybody happier. And here’s what it is, is that sort of the idea.
Danielle Hendon [13:34]
It is. And something they told us when I was at the CPA firm and a newbie auditor, was, you always want to make it about their benefit. So if your client is going to make it about their value, add about the benefit to them. Of you doing this, they’re not going to get dinged for every two minute phone call as they call for a question.
Steve Fretzin [13:54]
Yeah, I do that with my class. Everyone I work with is on a flat fee, and I include a training class. I include coaching, regular monthly coaching, and I’m on full retainer, which means they can call me anytime. I don’t want to think about at all how much I’m going to bill someone for half an hour, an hour or five minutes. That is the furthest thing from my brain as far as efficiency and how I want to conduct myself. So you’re when someone works with me, it makes it very easy, because of that, to just know everybody’s getting the same package. Everybody’s getting the same and again, how much they want to use it is up to them, but it’s an open and I’m never saying, Well, you’ve used it and now I’m going to charge them where I don’t even that doesn’t really happen with me. It’s so you think you just got to keep an eye on clients and maybe temper them back if they’re getting sort of out of control.
Danielle Hendon [14:43]
And we function in the same way. We’re flat fee on our services as well. And what I will say is, and I think the same probably applies for you, Steve and a lot of law firms, I want them asking questions if they’re I don’t want to deter them from that component of Yeah, yeah. So I want to make sure that there’s an O. Open door, and like you said, if it gets out of hand, then you’re like, hey guys, technically we said 24 to 48 hours. And here’s the boundaries, and protect your piece. Because, like I said, If you burn out, you are not going to stay in business, so make sure you’re still protecting that piece.
Steve Fretzin [15:14]
So I think setting expectations about responsiveness and timing and all that them understanding the value of the flat fee, and knowing that it’s they don’t have to watch the clock anymore, like, this project is going to get done.
Danielle Hendon [15:27]
I mean, I want you to watch the clock because we want to know that your flat fee is profitable, but you don’t have to watch it at that level of granularity that you’re not.
Steve Fretzin [15:35]
Watching it about like, mean, the client isn’t watching the clock, correct, right? They’re not worried about calling or not calling, because they’re going to get dinged every time they pick up the phone. I think there’s such a great I think from a, this is like an and then there’s also, you know, I think that may even benefit the relationship, because if you always have an hesitancy to talk to your lawyer, who you appreciate and think is great and all that, but you still have that hesitation, it’s still, I feel like the relationship can’t really have the same type of life.
Danielle Hendon [16:03]
You’ve always got it in the back of your head. How much am I going to pay for this phone? And you don’t get to have, for lack of a better way to put it, the fun conversations, the relationship building, the oh my gosh, how’s your kid doing in their play this weekend? Because they’re like, I’m paying you like.
Steve Fretzin [16:18]
I got I got billed for that. Danielle, I got billed. A guy talked to me for 10 or 15 minutes about my son and about our what we’re doing and all this. I looked at the bill, it was there, and I was like, so the next time he’s like, he’s like, how’s your family? Let’s skip that. Here’s what I need. Like, it was like, Oh, terrible. Don’t do that.
Danielle Hendon [16:36]
Who would you rather work with? Someone that just talked business, or someone you really got to know?
Steve Fretzin [16:41]
Yeah, yeah. So you’ve got the billable hour, you’ve got flat fees, and then, as you mentioned, you’ve got a hybrid where maybe it’s a flat fee, but then there’s some additional add on hours based on the scope changing and all of that. I mean, I, I guess I didn’t plan on us talking more specifically about about this type of a thing, but anything else that you would say has helped lawyers to scale and be more efficient as it relates to the way that they’re billing and the way that they’re charging clients.
Danielle Hendon [17:07]
Yeah, so I know all of you have heard of the rule of thirds, and just making sure that you really are staying in that rule of thirds metric as you grow and scale. And I’m speaking specifically to the solos as a start. When you are a solo, if you are not paying yourself enough, if you’re not giving that salary to yourself, you’re not you might be hitting the thirds, but you’re not going to be able to pay somebody else to get in and hit those thirds. So make sure that what you’re doing and how you’re generating revenue, and I am, by far, not the pipeline marketing person, but how that’s coming in, you’ve got to hit those rule of thirds, whether it’s pricing, whether it’s pipeline, whether it’s revenue generating costs, and then I don’t want to ignore all those operating expenses. Software for attorneys is expensive, and we are all guilty of some shiny object syndrome. So making sure that you’re getting a return on your investment, that the software is doing what it needs, that you’re not duplicating things. And then the other space that I think can be a, I don’t want to say a blind spot, it is a place that we have common conversations with our clients in, and that is determining whether a cost is actually required versus a personal perk or an investment. So yes, you need cles. I get it. I’m a CPA. I need CPEs. But I also know you can go get the most boring website, driven CLE somewhere online for like, 200 bucks, that $4,000 you want to spend to travel and go to a conference that’s either got to have a return on investment or it’s for fun, and it’s a personal perk in your business, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [18:44]
And it’s, you know, that’s sort of where I come into is people working conferences, people that are attending things or speaking of things, and not getting the ROI out of it, yeah. Get your CL ease. But also, you want to make sure, if you’re going to take three days away or four days away, that you’re walking back with some business, or you’re walking back with some next steps.
Danielle Hendon [19:02]
Yep, and that you have time to implement them. I think that’s the critical piece. So many go to so many people go to a conference, learn all these good things, have all these visionary dreams, come back and do nothing, yeah, because you don’t have time.
Steve Fretzin [19:15]
Execution is the beast. Everyone knows that. Everybody, as you know, one of the biggest challenges that law firms and lawyers face is hiring many attorneys know they need help, a virtual assistant, paralegal, legal secretary, but just don’t have the time to find and vet the right person. Well, that’s where hirearelegals.com comes in. They do all the heavy lifting, pre vetting top candidates who were in your time zone and ready to work, firms save hundreds of hours every year and can hire for as little as 2000 per month. And for be that lawyer listeners like you, you’re going to get 500 off your first hire when you visit hire paralegals.com and use the promo code Steve with proven SEO and. Digital Marketing Strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality. The best firms hire rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic and cases, other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today, hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you. And let’s make this your breakout year. You mentioned earlier the sort of the rule of third and I’m not wanting to dumb down this conversation, but can you just break that down, just so people know exactly what you’re talking about.
Danielle Hendon [20:56]
If you haven’t heard of it before, basically a third of your revenue should go to what I call revenue generating costs, the people and the expenses that are generating the revenue. A third of your revenue should go to all of those other operating expenses. You may know them as OpEx. You may know them as overhead. It’s going to have your cell phone, your internet, your conferences, your cles, your travel, your team that is not revenue generating, so an admin or a VA, all of that’s going to be in the operating expense piece, and then at the very bottom is your profit, and we want you to have a third of that in profit as well.
Steve Fretzin [21:31]
Yeah, okay, well, I appreciate you just breaking that down. I want to make sure, and that’s, you know, maybe a lead into, like, financial metrics, like, there are profit and loss statements, there’s balance sheets, there’s AR, there’s all these different business and accounting forms and documents that lawyers may not be looking at on a regular basis. What should they be tracking to make the better decisions and make sure they stay within the rule of thirds.
Danielle Hendon [21:54]
So those thirds, in and of itself, are the first thing I would look at, and they’re pretty easy to pull out of your P, L, profit and loss, whatever the income statement. Again, there’s so many terms that can be interchangeable, sometimes with accounting, but I want you to look at what is your total revenue that you’ve brought in less any discounts. Don’t take anything else out of it, but if you’ve discounted or written off time that should come out of it, then I want you to look at what I call revenue generating costs. And this part can be a little tricky, because a lot of accountants will put contractors and billable expenses and billable expense income up in this revenue section. They don’t put your payroll up there. So if your team is on payroll, you’ve got to physically go down. And I highly recommend any law firm listening to this breaks your payroll into three things. You should have owner’s comp. You should have the revenue generating people. You can call them attorneys. You can call them associates, whatever name makes sense to you, because you should be looking and it should make sense to you. And then you should have your administrative people. You can break it down even further if you need or want to, but at least those three buckets so you can easily say, okay, these are my revenue people. We’re going to move them up to revenue now is that more or less than a third, and there’s a little bit of wiggle room there, but you want to be as close as you can to that 1/3 of revenue. And then for the operating expense, I would say, make sure, again, that you’re taking that payroll out. Depending who you are, you may also want to take owner’s compensation. Out what you do as an owner and how you play into the firm. You might be a little bit of revenue generating. You might be a little bit of admin. You might just be taking a profit and letting the rest of the team run. You know where you land best, and that’s where your payroll should be, and that’s why you want to make sure it’s split out.
Steve Fretzin [23:38]
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So again, you know, we go back to here something I never learned in law school, right? So, business development, accounting, bookkeeping, CFO type, work operations, technology is changing. Maybe we wrap up on talking a little bit, just a minute or two about what are you seeing that’s helping law firms to be more successful in the in the age of software and AI, and the things that are happening and things that you see coming up the pike.
Danielle Hendon [24:05]
I think there’s still a lot to be done in AI for law firms, I think similar to accounting, there’s still a lot of hesitancy and what’s confidential and how secure is the data. I’m huge on AI. I love using it personally. I love helping our law firms use it. It’s phenomenal for the marketing side of business. I will say I think it’s going to get there. I think you’re going to be able to draft some things in AI, your paralegals. Life is going to get easier with AI. I don’t know that it’s there yet. The Other Side of kind of this going forward that I am seeing is a move towards operational efficiency. What goes it goes hand in hand with that flat fee pricing we were talking about, the faster we get. You want to still be able to build the same thing, otherwise, you’re going to be behind the eight ball. So knowing what those operational efficiencies are in your business and making sure you can kind of bucket where you’re working on things you. And can we flat fee that so that we can get the efficiency out of it? I will give you one example. We have. One of our clients has actually started, instead of charging for consults, they’re charging by like engagement. So as those engagement letters go out, that’s going to the client at a cost and a flat fee, but their paralegal is able to use all the operational tools to generate that pretty quickly. The other side is and I hate to put anybody down, but I’m having a lot of clients struggle with Clio task management, and they’re pulling in other systems for task management. So as you create those operational efficiencies, make sure the cost of the other system, because lawmatics and things like it can be very expensive, is giving you a return on investment that you are seeing the hours go down, and then as those hours go down, make sure that you’re figuring out where to flat fee price and bring the revenue back up. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [25:57]
I mean, is it gonna affect I mean, it’s AI. Is gonna affect every industry? Is it going to make your industry more efficient? I mean, if you’re able to take, oh, absolutely, a company that is putting in data, and then you, you’re having AI sort of figure out and plot all the data, instead of you having to go in and line item things, right?
Danielle Hendon [26:15]
Yep, we are doing a lot with Excel right now. Not so much. AI driven data, okay, but there is. There are a lot of really cool tools that are now connecting with QuickBooks or connecting with Xero, and trying to talk one of them into connecting with Clio so that we can do better realization mapping. And there’s going to be some really interesting visibility and visuals that you can get on your data. Because I will be the first to tell you, if I pull up a spreadsheet full of numbers, people glaze over, but if I can pull up a visual with graphs and data, we’re going to have a much better conversation.
Steve Fretzin [26:49]
Yeah, that’s awesome, awesome. Well, fantastic. And hopefully you guys listening have a bunch of takeaways already from what we’ve shared, what let’s move on to Danielle’s big mistake. What’s going down there?
Danielle Hendon [27:01]
Oh, I’m gonna actually riff on the Excel file thing. And as you get into automation, it is possible to go too far down the rabbit hole. I recently built a spreadsheet. And this is not a biggest mistake by far, but it is a funny one. I recently built a spreadsheet that was so big it was crashing my laptop, I could not even open it to make the changes I wanted to make. And I do not advise this to anybody. It’s not the smartest way, but we all operate sometimes on emotion. And I was really angry, and I really wanted the spreadsheet to work, and I went and bought a PC gaming computer that night so that I could do it.
Steve Fretzin [27:39]
So that was that the fix, that was the lesson learned is you need a computer that’s a lot smarter, faster, better.
Danielle Hendon [27:44]
No, the lesson and actually, so continuing from that, I didn’t actually fix it, got back into it, and I was like, This is too much. I need to pay somebody else. Put a pause on the emotional reaction.
Steve Fretzin [27:57]
Okay, very cool, very cool. And, you know, give me just really quick as we wrap up, Give me. Give us your day to day. Like, what does your company do? Tell us a little bit about four corner CFO, because a lot of small firms are just out there struggling to figure out the business side of it. And then you guys obviously help with that.
Danielle Hendon [28:16]
A lot of CFOs, when you reach out to one, will be project based, or they’re going to tell you they need to look at your numbers. And then they and then they can tell you what they can do. I bring that big business knowledge that I have from the oil and gas background and running an audit department of a company that went from billions of dollars to closed. And that means I know how to downsize those systems. And those are the systems we apply to small businesses. We are going to help you understand your revenue, make sure your bookkeeper is doing their job, figure out how much of those cles could be cheaper and which expenses we want to keep so that we can create a budget that makes sense for your business, based on your team, based on your goals. And then we’re going to compare that to your actuals and start to tell a story with your numbers, a story that you can understand and use, because the goal of a budget is not to hit a budget. The goal of a budget is to understand whether or not you want to make a change to your expectations or make a change in your business. And we are there to partner with you along the path either way.
Steve Fretzin [29:15]
Yeah. Just awesome, just awesome. And might as well finish it up. If people want to get in touch with you and they want to meet you or hear more about four corners. What’s the digits?
Danielle Hendon [29:24]
We’re gonna have a landing page just for you guys. So it’ll be on our website. The number four, not the word corner, cfo.com/be, that lawyer, and you’ll have a download. You can get for more information. You can book a consult call, or just to getting to know you pick my brain.
Steve Fretzin [29:39]
All right, be that lawyer come into the Rescue Time and time again. Fantastic. Let’s also take a moment thank our wonderful sponsors. Of course, hire paralegals.com they also have a business lad hire. So again, if you’re looking for full time, part time folks to help you know, scale out what you’re doing. Check them out. I think there’s a $500 off on your first hire. You. If you go in the use the promo code, Steve, we’ve got rankings. Io continue to crush it for all the PI firms around the country that are looking to get a lot more leads in the door. And of course, law her podcast with Sonya Palmer, crushing it continually. And guys again, if if you have any questions about what I do every day, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] and also check out our other podcast, future rainmakers, which is, again, just me sharing direct insights about what I do for my clients every day, and then also bringing in clients to help, kind of share the stage with me. So you get a little bit of a lawyer’s point of view on what the programming is and what it looks like, and how it could benefit you. Again, if you’re interested in going to the next level. Danielle, thank you so much.
Danielle Hendon [30:40]
Thank you so much for having me Steve.
Steve Fretzin [30:43]
Yeah. this was wonderful. And I just know when we talk about business development, marketing, operations, finance, technology, all these things, people need this show because it really helps them take in all the things that are, you know, not confusing necessarily, but maybe a little bit of a foreign language that they’ve got to learn and internalize. So, you know, having you on was was an absolute pleasure. Thank you again, yeah, and thank you everybody for hanging out with Danielle and I for the last 30 again. You know, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care. Everybody. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again very soon.
Narrator [31:19]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretzen.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.