Matt Darner: Getting Paid What You Deserve While Running a Law Practice

Steve Fretzin  [00:00]

Hey everybody, if you want to build a thriving practice without sacrificing your life, you’ll love my new podcast. Be that lawyer Coaches Corner. I cover sustainable growth, smarter systems, time management that works for you. We’ve already dropped a few new episodes. Search. Be that lawyer Coaches Corner and start listening today. Enjoy the show

 

Narrator  [00:21]

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, hey everybody.

 

Steve Fretzin  [00:44]

Steve Fretzin, and welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. So happy that you’re with us. I’ve been doing this for a long time now, about six years, 540 shows, something like that. And I love interviewing people. I got mad waiting in the wings ready to show us his brilliance. How you doing? Matt, I’m doing well. Steve, thanks for having me. Ah, good to have you, man. We’re going to have a lot of fun today talking about money and AR and all kinds of stuff, by the way, a topic we don’t really bring up too much on the show, but really an important one. So we’ll, we’ll come back to that. I want to remind everybody of two other, three other resources for growing your law practice. Be that lawyer, the book 101 top Rainmaker secrets for growing a successful law practice available on Amazon. You don’t want to pony up the dough and you just want an ebook, you can just email me at Steve at Bretts, and I’ll shoot one off to you. Not a problem, but it’s probably best to have the book you know you’re supporting my son’s 529 plan. He’s at Colorado State now, and we need all the help we can get. If he goes to grad school, we’re screwed. No, we’re fine. And then, of course, we’ve got our be that lawyer Coaches Corner with Steve Fretzin. The other be the lawyer podcast. Check that out. And by the way, if you haven’t been to my YouTube channel, just type in Steve Fretzin and on YouTube I have, I want to say 600 700 videos, podcasts, training videos, all kinds of really cool stuff. You could take a deep dive. You go deep enough you’ll see me without a beard and a little bit of a baby face, and that’s no good for anybody. But that’s there too, if you want to take a deep dive, all right, Matt, that’s all I have to say about that in the mortal words of Forrest Gump. And let’s start off with our quote of the show, which is one of my favorite segments. And it keeps getting better, because I’m hearing all these quotes that I’ve never heard before. This is a great one. This is what a red a deer. If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur. I totally get that. Welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about that quote.

 

Matt Darner  [02:28]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. Yeah, you know. So the story of red is he’s like, this famous hellfighter was like, what he was called, right? So this is a guy who would come in and put out fires on oil rigs, like major fires, right? And so just, I mean, the bravery and the, maybe the craziness of someone like that stands on its own. But what I think is interesting is, sort of, you know, the controversy, if you like, of that guy. He charged a lot for his work, right? But he put out fires on these incredibly lucrative enterprises, took great care of them. And, you know, solve this, let’s say, massive problem, right? By way of a raging inferno, and he charged a lot of money for it, right? But, you know, he’s kind of famous for being amazing at that brave diving into these crazy things. Literally, the term hellfighter is pretty, pretty crazy by itself. But you know, I think it resonates with all of us, right? Not just you and I here, but you know, those listening and running your firms like we all know those clients that have been just they come in, you can tell right away when they’re just super price conscious, they’re kicking the tires. It’s all about the cost. Big Red Flag, right? But I think for the rest of us trying to run scalable and successful businesses, you get what you pay for. And every time I’ve under invested in a staff member or anything, it’s always bit me, like every single time I thought I was getting a good deal. I was not right. Well, I don’t think

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:43]

anybody wants the cheapest divorce lawyer, the cheapest amateurist surgeon, right? I think, you know, coaching too. I feel like there’s a lot of great professionals that I love in my industry, but, you know, for every one good one, there’s 10 bad ones that are out there just hanging a shingle and trying to make it happen and charging a fortune and then not really being very helpful. So I think it’s important to for people to realize, you know, yeah, you might be paying more for someone with experience and someone that’s been doing it a while, but, you know, look, they’re going to get you there a lot faster, potentially, than someone who who’s figuring out alongside you. That’s right, really cool stuff. Hey everybody. Matt Darner, co founder of callbacks, give us a little bit of background of your how you got into that and working with lawyers? Yeah.

 

Matt Darner  [04:22]

So, you know, the quick tone check here is, you know, we’ll take over all the past due Bill chasing for law firms. So accounts receivable, right? Past due, Bill follow up. Yeah, good question. How does someone get in that line of work? You joke about the beard I had more hair when I started this company. So similar story. You know? How does someone think that that’s a good idea, right? I just got fascinated early on, right? With like, helping small to mid sized businesses. I’ve always done this in my career adopt better technology, better processes. I was not a finance guy. Was not a collections guy, despite the bald head, I’m a teddy bear, I swear. I don’t know and, but you know that? Actually started almost 10 years ago. We’ve been doing this for a long time. My co founder, who’s my best friend of 20 plus years, but a brilliant engineer, so kind of an app builder, a platform builder, and my unique skill is talking a lot now, and so sales and biz dev, right? He got this started, right, and brought me in quickly after. But he basically pitched an idea at an accounting conference, if you can believe it, a quick book sponsored conference to help really small businesses send their really past due invoices to collections. So how do you get the really hard stuff into the hands of, you know, specialists for that? What does it even mean to find a good collection agency? Do they exist? And that was a long time ago. That’s kind of call box 1.0 as I like to call it. But over the journey, we just found more and more ways to serve small businesses, eventually realizing law firms were our people like they they track their time, they bill for their work. They have high hourly rates. Their time is extremely valuable, and collecting on on those invoices is really painful for them, right? They want to go be great attorneys and do the legal work that’s no one. The short version is no one went to law school to be a bill collector. It’s sort of what I like to say, and that bears out, right? So building a platform and a service really, like an app meets a service that can take over the past due, chasing the validation has just been non stop. Once we finally and we’ll, I’m sure we’ll talk about this around mistakes in running businesses is once we niche down and like that. This is who we’re for. This is all we’re focused on. The business exploded, right?

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:26]

Well, since you brought it up, I mean, look, some things just get away from people. And AR for lawyers, sometimes they, you know, they just, they want to be a nice guy, they’re billing hours, they’re in the middle of a matter, and things just get out of hand. And next thing you know, it’s six months and longer, they haven’t got paid. And, you know, it’s 100,000 it’s 200,000 and they’re realizing, look, this is like a lot of money, and it just gets harder and harder to deal with. So what are some of the common mistakes that lawyers make that allow money to get out of hand and the AR to build?

 

Matt Darner  [06:56]

Yeah, a great question, and there’s several. And so one thing, I think, and this will vary a little bit by your size of firm, right? If you’re a true solo, I feel it for you. I was doing our books, like in QuickBooks, when we started call box, like I been there, done that, where still wear many hats, right, on the average day. So I get that. But whatever size of firm you are trying to control everything inside the firm is a big mistake, right? You want to have people that are good at things you’re not, and let them go be good at those things while you go be the hero and the expert on the legal matters. Right? That’s why you started. That’s why you went to law school, like that’s what you’re for right now, I do think, and Steve, I know you’ll agree with this, we get enriched by learning how to run a business, and it can open a new dimension to us that maybe we didn’t know we had that’s certainly true for me. I think I started a business because I was a really bad employee with too many ideas and authority issues, and I was like, I gotta go try my own thing. And boy, was that humbling, right? Like, you learn how to learn how to go face to face with running a business, which is incredibly hard, but you know, you are the expert in legal, put the right people in position for all kinds of things, getting the bills out the door. That’s a unique skill set, tracking time, approvals, things like that, following up on past due bills. Yeah, that’s a different skill set. A lot of people like to throw that on their the person doing the billing, because you think, oh, whether you’re billing, getting the bill out the door, just go follow up on it. I get the thread. But think about the skill set that it requires to get bills out meticulously, accurately, systematically, and then think about what it takes to collect on them right systems, you know, detail oriented, charismatic, persuasive, persistent, right and not kind of thin skinned right people will avoid you when you’re trying to get paid, right?

 

Steve Fretzin  [08:37]

But then, why do mid market and even large law firms like have their people collecting like, why is that a job that a lawyer who’s proficient at intellectual property at the highest level is spending countless hours chasing after his or her AR?

 

Matt Darner  [08:52]

You know, before founding a company, I’m a lifelong sales guy, right? So good and the bad, I try to be the best sales guy I can be. Sales guys get a bad rep, and some of it’s deserved, not all of it, though, but when I think back on my best experiences with clients who are the happiest, and some of these are some of the largest deals I’ve ever closed in my career, right? A lot of it is about setting really good expectations at the beginning and then achieving those expectations, kind of whatever they are. I know, as funny as that sounds like, certainly people want a great outcome in their legal matter that’s going to have a bearing on, you know, their willingness and happiness to pay, but setting clear expectations of what it means to engage with you as a professional. And let’s just clearly laying those things out, and we can talk about the people that are going to support you know that those expectations in that system, but your job as the first point of contact in the face of the business, especially if you’re in that sales role, is to set expectations. Clearly, I think, when we don’t do that, and then when we get in our own head, too, of feeling like the bad guy, as you pointed out, and chasing the money, it just goes sideways. You start making exceptions. You don’t follow the system. You don’t follow there is no machine, right? When you’re kind of winging.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:00]

But, but that’s, that’s my point, I guess, is that law firms, I think, struggle with systems that handle the AR so that the lawyer doesn’t And granted, the lawyer has to set expectations. I can’t argue with that. But the other side of it is like it’s their own responsibility to go collect a million dollars and all the time and energy that that takes when they could be billing hours and doing business development. So it irks me to my core, when I talk to lawyers that I can just tell they’re stressed out and upset and angry because they’ve got to go chase after this money. That’s not what they signed on for. The law firm hasn’t put people or systems in place to essentially take it off their plate, which is, I think, ridiculous, absolutely.

 

Matt Darner  [10:40]

I mean, I think it is about investing in a lot of areas of your practice, right, but in the systems, putting the right technology, the right SOPs, and, of course, the right people to execute those SOPs in and that’s what it comes down to. I think interestingly to me, I guess just being an outsider was not I’ve been doing this a long time. I guess now you could say I’m, I’m an expert in AR, but I never thought of myself that way. When we started this, it was sort of just attacking a really interesting problem. And, you know, like a dog with a bone. A decade later, I’m still here, you know, and so I think it’s interesting to me that we know that when we run a business, the goal of a business, at least, let’s say one of the goals of a business is to make money, right, to be sustainable. Doesn’t mean all you care about is money, but it is the blood of your business. You need cash to survive. It’s nothing crazy. We all know that, and yet, accounts receivable or Bill chasing, right is almost one of the last things people hire for. They hate doing it the most. There’s just this deep psychology of money and psychological aversion to this task. Yeah, that is pervasive, and I can tell you, having done this outside of legal for a long time, too. It’s everywhere. It’s every single industry. And I don’t care who you are, most people hate calling and asking for money. That means you just need to find the right person who doesn’t mind. And actually, it’s even better. Think about going the last time I went to a doctor’s office, right? Every time I’ve been to a doctor’s office and it’s something like, Oh, we’re going to do a test because I’m, you know, not feeling well. Maybe I’m like, I don’t know if that’s covered by insurance. Like, what is this going to cost me? Right? The doctor is like, I have no idea. Yeah, no, I don’t know. Yeah, sorry. Like, they that culture is instilled, like, deeply into medical professionals that I don’t handle the billing. I’m here to be the best provider of care for you possible. And look as a consumer, that could be a little frustrating. I’m not going to lie, but when you have a qualified, high quality person who will handle those questions with care and professionalism and be good at answering those questions, unlike a lot of our medical billing experiences, I’m sure we’ve all had then that can be a very good experience. You maintain arm’s length and keep being the hero, right? Keep being the legal professional. It just doesn’t have to be you.

 

Steve Fretzin  [12:49]

Yeah, it’d be a funny reality show if they had, like, a doctor’s office or a hospital where they had to sort of disclose what all the fees were as they were happening. So by the way, that ambulance you brought in before we move you into a room that’s going to be, you know, $4,500 Cash, check or charge. And then, by the way, okay, we did that procedure, right? And just watching everybody’s head explode as they realize, like, how much we’re actually, you

 

Matt Darner  [13:14]

know, and on screen, we, like, tabulate the number, yeah, right. No, that would be a little side, little

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:18]

sidebar, like, you know, like a tic tac video or something.

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:28]

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Matt Darner  [15:25]

think we normalize a lot of bad behavior from our clients, right, in a way that we don’t engage in with any of our vendors or our you know, we all pay our electric bill on time or mortgage or we what’s up with that?

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:37]

Yeah, I pay all my bills on time and never think twice about it, and then lawyers don’t get paid explain that,

 

Matt Darner  [15:43]

yeah, and so I think it’s interesting. There are, there’s so many different classifications, if you want to use, like a term of art, of debtors, people who owe the money, right? They’re your clients, right? Debtor feels a little rough, you know? But when we talk about it from a statistics perspective, there are different types of debtors. There are different types of clients. Most overwhelmingly, are not malicious or willful, like trying to, you know, disagree out of your money or anything like that, anything like that. But when you don’t present a well oiled machine with high, you know, clear expectations and then reinforce it, maybe that’s even the most important part here, that in my world, is clients get away with whatever we all kind of do, right? Well, if you don’t send me the invoice, then, so this goes upstream from us right on the follow up side. If you don’t even bill on time, how am I that you are literally, you know, sort of quietly, you know, telling me that you don’t really care about getting paid, right? If I and they internalize that, like, whether you think you’re saying it or not you are saying it when you don’t get your billing out on time and reliably. So I’m sure you have tons of thoughts on this too, Steve, but I feel like people, some people struggle. Like in my world, I think you should Bill weekly or bi weekly. It depends on practice area and your velocity of work.

 

Steve Fretzin  [16:55]

Bi weekly meaning twice a month, correct? Yeah, that’s

 

Matt Darner  [16:59]

always a fun semantic game too, with that one fortnightly. No, I’m kidding, but yes, so more frequently than monthly, that said, and this is not that controversial, but I think some people are so locked in on bi weekly or weekly, that I say, look, but if you can’t get monthly right start there, like, it’s like, me, I’m bigger guy. I’m like, gonna lose 100 pounds. It’s like, Well, why don’t we lose like, five first? You know, just like, No, we do like, like, let’s go and so get monthly down like a science. Because if you’re not invoicing regularly, it is communicating something is wrong with your business, whether you know that or not, or think about it like that or not. So that’s one major up the chain. Way attract your time well, get your bills out on a regular cadence that instills professionalism and just shows your client you’ve got it together, then you’ve got to follow up consistently as well, because that reinforces that you have an expectation of being paid for your work, right? The attorney is probably going in high confidence. We’re going to do this. It’s going to be great. They’re feeling awesome, right? Like at that moment, we’re great. It is all of the systems issues that happen after that that sort of erode that confidence over time, and then marry that with something didn’t go well with the case. Uh oh, right. Or you, I know you got really busy with your caseload, didn’t communicate very often or give them a good update. Now, there’s just this mental game on the client side, that’s like, I haven’t heard from them in a while. I haven’t even seen a bit. When’s the last time I got a bill from these guys? You know, no one even calls. Some people notice that I’m a weirdo. I noticed when people don’t call me, like, because, you know, and then they start to build this narrative in their head of, like, all the reasons What’s wrong, and then we get to justify not paying you right, and that’s when you’re in trouble, and it’s so much harder to unwind at that point. There’s a great quote partner of mine who works on the billing process side, and she has a great team. Her name is Randa Prendergast. I know Randa, you know Randall, yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:54]

for the tech show every year. She’s, yeah, she’s been on the show,

 

Matt Darner  [18:57]

fantastic, I know. And she’s great. We just launched a partnership together, and free reasons you’ll get, but we’re literally just two sides of the same coin, right? And so, you know, at the end of the day, it’s sort of like, if you’re not, think about invoices and bills, and I think of this with, like, sort of the soft touch collections calls, it’s a customer service touch point is actually what it is. And get out of your own head on, like, Oh, they’re I’m harassing them. I’m bothering them. Well, you could be if your approach is wrong, but you just doesn’t have to be that way, right? So when you send an invoice, it tells them what you’ve been up to, right? So it’s literally your, hey, we’re showing off all the great work we did. I know there’s a bill attached. I know that’s a little uncomfortable, but it is similarly an opportunity to say, look at everything we just did in this period of time. For you awesome, the follow up phone calls are similarly, you know, I train my team to say, hey, you know, it’s Matt calling on behalf of ABC law. I’m just checking in on invoice, 123, did you get that? Do you have any questions? I’m sure you just missed it or something. What’s going on? Anything I can help you with. You almost do this sort of assumptive like, oh yeah, I know you’re going to pay. It’s not about that. It’s just, oh, you probably missed it. I’m just checking in what’s going on, how you feeling, right? It’s very soft and more professional sounding than that. I’m winging it a little. But how you doing? No, we don’t feel a mocking. How you doing, no, but

 

Steve Fretzin  [20:12]

what I liked, what you said, was you sort of, you know, you probably already got it. Or it’s, maybe it’s our mistake, like there’s certain language that softens up, that it’s not, hey, you suck, and you haven’t paid, and where’s my damn money, right? More, like, you know, hey, this is probably on us, or it’s probably a mistake, or, I don’t mean to, you know, be a pest, but we’re looking to see, you know, and just kind of easing your way into it a little bit,

 

Matt Darner  [20:35]

and that’s the way you start, right? Because I think that’s something a lot of attorneys worry about, oh, they’re going to be so like, the feathers are going to be ruffled. They’re going to be so upset. Well, yeah, if you do it wrong, sure, but that’s why it’s a skill you know, that you need to invest in, or have a person or a, you know, a process to do that. And so, yeah, it’s my mistake, our mistake just checking in. You probably didn’t get it very, very soft, almost like, oh wow, you know, silly us, right? And then we gently escalate, but when you don’t make follow up phone calls consistently, you can’t escalate it, right? And the reason is, I have a lot of consults with attorneys who know they haven’t followed up on this client in six months. Now, you’re in your own head. Think about your to do list, right? Oh my god, that thing I’ve been putting off for six months. And then you think about how long you’ve been putting it off, and then you just go, you psych yourself out and don’t do it even further, and then you wake up a year later and it’s just not it’s still not done. But it took 30 seconds right to do it like that’s accounts receivable in some ways and so but when you consistently reach out, then you can build and ask, gently escalate the language, because you know and you have full confidence. Wow. We followed up 12 times with this client and emailed them. They have the bill. We’ve given them every possible opportunity to communicate if we did something wrong, you know, hopefully that’s not the case, and then I think that will build your confidence up to say, well, now we’re gonna, now we’re gonna maybe turn up that temperature

 

Steve Fretzin  [21:58]

a little bit. You’re gonna stop producing, you know, work for them. Consequences now, right? You know, absolutely, but you know, I think before it gets out of hand, let’s go back to the beginning for just a moment, and then we’ll go back to the end. But, yeah, you said something important at the beginning of the show, which was about setting clear expectations about how we’re going to work together and how the bills get paid. And it’s not the easiest conversation, but I think it’s an important conversation, because the not setting expectations allows for things to slip through the cracks and bills not to get paid. So I think it’s not only setting expectations about how the bills will go out and how we’re going to get paid and how this is going to work, getting agreement from them that that’s okay and that they’re going to do it and maybe even like and if, for some reason, you miss a payment or something happens, here’s how we’re going to respond. Can you just kind of add a little more color to that?

 

Matt Darner  [22:53]

Absolutely, you know, I think at its core, an AR workflow is just a series of okay, if not here, then what? Okay, and if we didn’t get paid here, then what? And as many of those as are appropriate for your practice area and peppering. And you know, something you said made me think of this in terms of mistakes and processes that firms make, is they lose their leverage, right? And they basically give away all the legal work without getting fully paid for it, right? So that’s part of the story, too. So communicating along this timeline, here’s what happens, and hey, if you missed a payment, we got you. Here’s some some opportunities, payment plans, how to get caught up, and it’s friendly at that stage, like and plan for it, right? Know what you’re going to do if they fall off track, because it will happen. It’s a numbers game, but have it documented so every member of your team knows if a, you know, A, B or C happens. Here’s how we react. It’s not a go bug the partner or the attorney or anyone else, right? Of like, what do we do now? It’s just moving, and they’re not that many implementations of this, right? But people fall behind. Do we allow them to get onto a payment plan to catch up? How do we structure that at what amount of time, right? And then I think along the way, it’s really, really critical that we know when the point of no return is right. There needs, it’s going to vary by practice area jurisdiction, even right. Like, so take family law, which we see a lot of, right? You can’t always pull out of the case right? Like, there’s a point in time in some places, maybe never, and that’s hard. You got to be really careful in those jurisdictions, right? But most of most places, you can, but not infinitely So, right? Not once you’re really in the thick of it, head of a trial, hearing and appearance, you know, when is the bill going to pop? Right? You need to make sure that it’s all green flags for every client leading up to that sort of thing. And if it’s not, when are we going to pull the plug? I think so many people are afraid to do that, and then they wake up, you know, okay, we’ve got $2,000 in trust. It’s supposed to be 5000 I’m just making up some numbers here. But there’s, you know, 1000 or 2000 and work in progress we haven’t built for yet. Then there’s another 2000 and unpaid. Paid bills, right? And we’re reluctant to draw down on the trust because we’re trying to hang on to that for, you know, a rainy day, but the rainy day is already here. Then we have a hearing coming up, and we know that that’s on average, going to pop 10k, 15k and then you’re on the hook for it all. And then you wake up, you know? And I have that conversation with you, okay, you have $30,000 out of this client. The matter’s over now. Maybe even they had a great outcome, right? But even harder if they didn’t. And now, what are we going to do? Right? It’s a ball of yarn,

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:26]

so let me ask you this, and this is maybe a little bit of getting into your business, a bit the you know, there’s collections, like in its truest form, where it’s way overdue, it’s a lot of money, it’s got to be collected. That’s not what call box does. Is that? Right? You guys, right? You guys are more on the front end, helping protect that from happening. So tell us, tell everybody a little bit about that. We’ll call this the shameless blog segment or something. But like, people are probably sitting here going, okay, there’s obviously something that this guy, Matt has, that is allowing us to systematize collections and AR so we don’t have to deal with this crap, and they’ll probably want to know what that is.

 

Matt Darner  [26:03]

Sure, sure. So my little pun is, I like to say call boxes like collections with the lowercase d, right? It is an internal process. It’s a back we’re a back office solution, right? We represent as a member of your team. We’re sort of a funky hybrid between just a team you could hire to make those calls for you and a tech company, because we integrate directly with the practice management system. You know, we’ve got Clio smoke ball, my case is coming very soon, and we also do like QuickBooks and accounting system things as well. But that’s where the source of truth is, right? So at the end of the day, you know, you track your time, you bill for it, the practice management system knows what’s due and when it’s due. Well, we build all these integrations, pull that data out, and we have that system to basically route that to real human beings, North American native English speakers trained in accounts receivable, who will make the phone calls as a member of the firm, right So on behalf of the firm, but also our flavor of email automation cadences, we just built it all out and using all the best practices of, How often should we reach out? What should we say, you know, both in email format and phone call format, while still respecting the tooling you use so that the same invoice PDF that you generated out of a Clio, for example, gets resent to them, not some manufactured new invoice that’s confusing. And what’s a call box? You know, as far as the client’s concerned, and then your payment links too. So we don’t touch the money. We just take the best parts of what you’ve got and do all the parts of what you’re not doing right, and kind of plug it in. And the last thing I’ll end with on that, to end our plug, is the average AR clerk, you know, trained in this great at these phone calls. That’s a job role that’s been around forever. But big companies, big law firms have those because they have bodies and money to throw at problems. Right? Small to mid sized firms, 95% of firms don’t have a dedicated, what I would call a collection specialist. You might have a billing specialist, but you don’t have a collection specialist because you don’t want to pay 60 grand a year, because that’s what they cost, that’s what we pay. And so literally, you know, it doesn’t make sense economically. But with these integrations, we’ve been able to have one of those reps serve 15 to 20 law firms at a time, so the cost comes way down. Okay, and plug, but, yeah, yeah.

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:10]

But, I mean, I think what we’re looking for is we’re looking for a solution where we don’t have it’s like anything. I’m always saying, delegate, delegate, delegate. And you know, if they are in collections, is a problem and you’re not doing it, your firm sucks at it, and it’s taking up your time as a busy lawyer, doing high level, quality work, you know, outsource it, and I’m sure you guys have lots of, you know, validation and testimonials and stuff like that. You’ve been doing this a long time, awesome stuff, and we’ll give out your digits in a minute. But let’s talk about something even more important. What’s big what’s Matt’s big mistake.

 

Matt Darner  [28:40]

There’s so many. But where to start? There’s so so many. Yes, that’s certainly true. There’s a couple things when we started this company, so going on this year, so November of 25 will be 10 years for us. We’ve been doing this a very long time. It’s only the last three or four years that we really laser focused in on law firms. Really. We’d had plenty of law firm clients over those years, but just ripped off the band aid and said, No, this is who we’re for. We’re not doing this for others. Taking that long to get to that realization and niching down, I think, is probably the biggest mistake, and some of it, you know, you got to learn, and you got to go through the journey. First time founder for me, this is my first business. You just have to learn the hard way a lot of times, but once we realized and did the hard, hard work of realizing who were for and why we’re doing it, and really deeply understanding their businesses, it unlocked everything. You know, I think we launched our Clio integration two years ago in 2023 and we tripled our revenue in the back half of that year, like we integrated mid 23 and then that we tripled our revenue. They named us one of the best new apps in their ecosystem. That year. Felt funny to be a new app when I’ve been doing this a really long time, but it was really like, wow, I think we got it right. And then the validation since then has just been amazing. And so niching down, I get the attraction. I did it for eight years almost. You know. So just to sort of say yes to everyone, because I think attorneys are the same. You want to help people, and yeah, you want to make some money too. Like, I don’t want to turn off a revenue channel. But when it, when you think about how expensive it is, time wise, to try to support everyone, I like to say we were a mile wide but an inch deep right on all these verticals. We had plumbers and H back, and

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:21]

I’m with you, man, I worked in over 50 industries before focusing on lawyers. And, I mean, I had a local carpet cleaner named Stu I had Caribbean medical school. I had, you know, Chicago Tribune. Had a bunch of other cool and it’s, it’s interesting to be in everything, but it’s not focused to your point. And has been said on the show many times the riches are in the niches.

 

Matt Darner  [30:41]

So couldn’t agree more, all around that in there.

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:45]

Yeah, hey, man, we got to wrap up. Let’s thank our sponsors. We got rankings. Io, crushing it for firms around the country. Pi, firms that want to get their digital all laid out and set and social media line and everything. The law her podcast. Check that out with Sonia Palmer, and, of course, legal verse media, helping people, you know, get more of an international flair from a website, and getting an insight to what’s going on around the world. And legal Matt, people want to get in touch with you. They want to hear about call box, get the details. What are the digits?

 

Matt Darner  [31:15]

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, you can always check us out. Call box.co. So C, O, L, L, B, O, x.co, like collection box, find me on LinkedIn. Matt Darner, I’m happy to chat anytime, not just about call box, but just helping you build a better AR workflow. I also do a lot of CLE and awesome podcasts like this. So trying to try to spread the good word of getting people paid for their hard work, if I could have one final quip, you deserve to be paid for your work. I feel like a cheerleader for you all the time. Get that out of your head. You do hard work. You bust your butt on this. You deserve to be paid for it doesn’t mean you have to be a bad guy, either, but you deserve to be paid for your work. Yeah, beautiful

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:53]

thing, beautiful thing. All right, well, thanks, Matt, and I’m so happy to have you on the show and sharing your wisdom. And again, this is a topic. When I met you, I was like, you know, is it business development related? Is it marketing related? Is it marketing related? Well, no, it’s, but it’s business related, and it allows people to focus on the things that they do best, and, and I think, you know, it’s such a drain, emotional drain, thinking about the money you’re owed and the people that are screwing you, and all the different things that can come in, the bad blood that can occur, and anything we can do to avoid it or outsource it to make that pain go away. I was all about having you on the show, man. So thank you so much.

 

Matt Darner  [32:27]

No, I appreciate it. And maybe one just final. Final thing I think I love to tell people is think about what you want to do with your firm and what growth plans you have. Well, now we got to go sell all these new clients and all this additional capital. No, maybe we just start by getting paid for our work, investment possible for funding your growth, right?

 

Steve Fretzin  [32:44]

Last money is the money you already have coming in. Just great. You got to get it. Great, exactly. Yeah, I’m with you on that. All right, buddy. Thanks so much. And thank you everybody for hanging out with Matt and I for last 30 plus. You know, look it, there’s just a lot of different moving parts with running a law firm, running a law practice, and building your book. This is just another one that hopefully you get a couple of good takeaways that are going to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Take care. Everybody. Be safe. Be well. Talk again real soon.

 

Narrator  [33:15]

Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.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.